BIRMINGHAM.- The Barber Institue of Fine Arts announced a significant new acquisition, Joseph Gott’s Greyhound with Puppies. There are few works by Gott on display in UK public collections, and this small marble sculpture is regarded as one of the artist’s best works.
The £55,000 aquistion was made possible thanks to support from Art Fund (£12,500) and The Arts Council England / V&A Purchase Grant (£12,500). Tomasso Brothers Fine Art made a donation of £5,000, with the remaining £25,000 coming from the Henry Barber Trust.
Gott (1786-1860) was a British-born sculptor who, having arrived in Rome in 1822 thanks to a small pension from then RA President Sir Thomas Lawrence, established a successful studio making sculptures for aristocrats travelling on the Grand Tour. It was in Rome that he was introduced to Antonio Canova.
Gott’s studio quickly forged a reputation for specialising in works featuring children and dogs. In the case of the latter, likely because there had recently been major discoveries of ancient Roman sculptures of greyhounds, which inspired the visiting gentry to commission Gott to immortalise their own dogs in terracotta and marble.
Gott was a skilled modeller able to capture realistic expression and gesture in his portraits, animal and human, and his smaller marbles (such as Greyhound with Puppies) retain these qualities alongside extremely sensitive carving and finishing. During his lifetime, Gott was once described as ‘the Landseer of marble.’
Greyhound with Puppies shows Gott at his best: an artist able to reference antique precedents, accurately observe living breathing creatures and convey a warm sentiment - here, of protective maternal love and vulnerable infancy.
The Barber Institute’s Director, Nicola Kalinsky, says “We are absolutely delighted to be able to add ‘Greyhound with Puppies’ to the Barber collection, allowing us continue developing our small, but important, group of sculpture. Extending chronologically from an ancient Greek ‘Head of Aphrodite’ (4th century BCE) to Jean Arp’s ‘Homme vu par une fleur’ (1958) our sculpture collection includes superlative examples of their type, however up until now we’ve had no neo classical works in the collection. ‘Greyhound with Puppies’ fills that space and supports us in our aim to present a representative display of the western art tradition through outstanding individual examples. It also joins a strong strand of animal sculpture at the Barber, offering an interesting comparison to our ‘A Rhinoceros called Miss Clara’ (c. 1750, attributed to Verschaffelt).”
The arrival of Greyhound with Puppies in Birmingham also serves to shine a spotlight on an artist whose work has until now only received sporadic attention or prominence in public exhibitions and collections. However, with interest in depiction of other animals now growing again, Gott’s work and cultural importance deserves fresh attention.
Greyhound with Puppies can now be seen in the Barber’s Beige Gallery, on display near Etienne Aubry’s Paternal Love (c.1775), a painted celebration of human parental love and family sentiment, and A Rhinoceros called Miss Clara, the Barber’s iconic bronze of an exotic celebrity animal.
Joseph Gott was born in December 1785 and died in Rome in August 1860. In 1798 he was apprenticed to the sculptor John Flaxman and seven years later, Gott entered the Royal Academy Schools. Clearly talented, he won the Silver Medal in 1806; a similar prize, the Greater Silver Palette was awarded by the Society of Arts in 1808. In 1819 he won the Royal Academy Gold Medal. By this time he was regularly submitting works to the Royal Academy and British Institution annual exhibitions and attracted the interest and support of the painter and newly-elected President of the Royal Academy, Sir Thomas Lawrence. Lawrence provided Gott with a pension, enabling the sculptor, his wife and two young children, to travel to Rome in 1822. Although Gott returned to England on a number of occasions for business reasons, Rome became his home for the rest of his life.
