Young Man with a Candle, from Life-Sized Heads
1760
Medium
Mezzotint in black on ivory laid paper
Dimensions
Image: 47.2 × 35.1 cm (18 5/8 × 13 7/8 in.); Sheet: 50.5 × 36 cm (19 15/16 × 14 3/16 in.)
Classification
mezzotint
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
129436
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
Features gone ashen and eyes bulging, Thomas Frye’s anonymous figure brandishes a candlestick. The embodiment of Romantic terror, he may very well have seen a ghost or encountered other scientifically inexplicable horrors. Backed against an unforgiving and ancient stone wall, he suggests a tragic hero like the one in the first Gothic novel, Horace Walpole’s soon-to-be published Castle of Otranto. Joseph Wright of Derby copied some of Frye’s heads for his Experiment with the Air Pump; this fright...
About the Artist
Thomas Frye · 1710–1762
Irish, Edenderry 1710/11–1762 London