Hang His Waxworks!

Piers Burton-Page presents an entertaining event focusing on the life and times of the sculptor Joseph Nollekens.

The Friends of Lincoln Museums and Art Gallery bring you this event hosted by former Radio 3 broadcaster Piers Burton-Page, which promises a rich haul of amusing anecdotes as well as insights into Nollekens's work.

Visitors to Lincoln passing through the Usher Gallery often cast appreciative glances at the many fine sculptures on display. Among them are a handful of pieces by an almost forgotten figure who once dominated his chosen sphere, and who although born in the mid-eighteenth century, lived a very long and productive life and died in 1823 aged 85. His name was Joseph Nollekens (the family was originally from Antwerp), and by the time of his death he was a very rich man: by today’s standards his estate was worth several million. His wealth came from rich patrons who commissioned portrait busts or funeral monuments, or who bought sculptures from his studio at exorbitant prices.

Among Nollekens’s many aristocratic patrons was the first Baron Yarborough; the family seat is still Brocklesby Hall, in the north of the county, not far from Immingham. It is via this route that the Usher Gallery acquired amongst other objects an elegant Venus Chiding Cupid, and an impishly humorous figure of Mercury, the winged messenger of the gods. The model for this last was Nollekens’s pupil Thomas Smith, who became his master’s assistant, friend and eventually executor. But in this last capacity he was to be grievously disappointed, receiving when the will was proved not the share in Nollekens’s large fortune that he had expected, but a miserly £100.

Smith exacted his revenge by writing an often malicious biography of his master. It is chaotic and rambling, but full of rich anecdotes not just about the sculptor but about his wife and their friends. 

Under the title ‘Hang his Waxworks!’, writer and broadcaster Piers Burton-Page has extracted the highlights and adapted them for three voices. With two actor colleagues he will be presenting this light-hearted portrait of Nollekens in the auditorium at The Collection, on Saturday 22nd October at 2pm, with a chance to inspect the original sculptures in the Usher Gallery afterwards.

Tickets are available from The Collection reception desk from 1st October 2016; to purchase tickets please call in to the museum or call 01522 550965.

Tickets are £10 for Friends of Lincoln Museums and Art Gallery members and £13 for non-members.