Marble portrait bust of Charles Townley (1735-1805) by Christopher Hewetson (1737-c.1798), slightly to right, wearing a wig and a shirt with a ruffle below the collar under drapery which falls over his right shoulder, attached to an original polished marble socle; signed and dated.
Charles Townley was of an old Lancashire recusant family. He was educated abroad at the Roman Catholic school in Douai (present-day Belgium). As a young man he lived in Paris. In his twenties he divided his time between Towneley Hall, his estate near Burnley, Lancashire, which he inherited in 1758, and London. In 1767, on his first visit to Rome, he began to collect on a major scale the classical sculptures which were eventually purchased for the nation after his death at a cost of £20,000. They were housed in a new gallery at the British Museum, originally built for Egyptian antiquities and extended to house the Townley Collection, which was opened in 1808. Townley was a Museum Trustee from 1791 to his death.
Christopher Hewetson was born into a Protestant landowning family in Co. Kilkenny, Ireland. After attending Kilkenny College, he is recorded as working with or for the sculptor John Van Nost the Younger (c. 1712-80) in the late 1750s on statues for the Rotunda Gardens, Dublin, before leaving for Italy around 1765. His earliest known work there is probably a bust of Viscountess Sudley executed between 1767 and 1769. He never returned to Ireland, relying on commissions for busts of eminent Italians, as well as visitors to Rome, especially British notables. Hewetson has been called 'the greatest of all Irish sculptors'.
The portrait, which together with one of Sir Watkin Williams Wynn is the earliest dated work by this sculptor, was made from life and was perhaps commissioned at the suggestion of Townley's brother, Edward Townley Standish. It was not delivered until early 1770, when the dealer in antiquities and banker Thomas Jenkins, who had perhaps recommended the little-known sculptor to his friend the sitter, reported that it was to sail towards England forthwith, although further correspondence suggests that it was not despatched until late April or very early May. The 'Model and Mould' sent to England with the bust have disappeared. It is interesting to note the entry for 6 February 1805 in Joseph Farington's Diary: "Nollekens I called on. He was modelling a Bust of the late Mr Townley [see registration no. OA.10272] . . . He shewed me a Bust of Him executed by Hewetson in Rome, 37 years ago, to me it appeared not like what he formerly was." This suggests that Nollekens owned the model in 1805.
The sitter is portrayed in a naturalistic rather than a classicizing style. The half-turn of the head, the springy curls of the wig and the folds of the rather disordered shirt and jacket depict a man of fashion. The original cost of the bust, made of a carefully chosen piece of marble, which nonetheless exhibits several impurities in the neck, on the mouth and on the forehead, is not known.