Talking heads: classical portrait busts in the country house, 1715-1832

Atkins, Alexandra Marie (2023) Talking heads: classical portrait busts in the country house, 1715-1832. PhD thesis, Birkbeck, University of London.

Abstract

The aim of this thesis is to examine the classical portrait bust in the country house, rehabilitating and interrogating a type of sculpture which has been neglected or dismissed in scholarship. The bust, a ubiquitous object type of the long eighteenth century, is now somewhat unfashionable, and thus treated by modern scholarship as merely decorative. In fact, bust portraiture was a crucial part of country house symbolism and the self-fashioning of the English elite. Over a period of 117 years, between the Hanoverian Succession in 1715 and the passing of the Reform Act in 1832, eight country house case studies are analysed. In each case, ancient busts are considered alongside neoclassical copies, versions, fakes, and restorations. I will argue that the interplay between the bust and the eighteenth century’s intense engagement with the classical Greco-Roman past allowed the aristocracy and gentry to elide past and present, and to claim ancient ancestors and allies. The bust emerges from the eight case studies as no mere ornament. This thesis will demonstrate that political and personal hopes, loyalties, and losses were expressed and embedded in the country house using this versatile and desirable sculptural medium.

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