George Banks
Joseph Gott
c. 1828
Medium
Terracotta
Dimensions
53 × 58.5 × 20.6 cm (21 × 23 × 8 1/8 in.)
Classification
sculpture
Department
Painting and Sculpture of Europe
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
242043
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
This highly finished terracotta was modeled by Joseph Gott in preparation for a marble portrait of his patron George Banks, a wealthy Yorkshire cloth merchant. Banks sits on a klismos, a style of ancient Greek chair revived by Neoclassical artists during the late 18th century. His pose emulates sculptures from antiquity that depict seated figures resting on one arm with one leg forward. Despite this reference to the idealized grandeur of ancient sculpture, the portrait conveys a modern sense of ...