NOLLEKENS, Joseph (1737-1823), sculptor, was born 11th August 1737 in London, where his father, a native of Antwerp, the “old Nollekens” of Horace Walpole, was a painter of some repute. In his thirteenth year he entered the studio of the sculptor Scheemakers, and practised drawing and modelling with great assiduity, ultimately gaining various prizes offered by the Society of Arts. In 1760 he went to Rome, and he executed a marble bas-relief, Timoclea before Alexander, which obtained a prize of fifty guineas from that society in 1762. Remunerative commissions began to come in, Garrick and Sterne being among the first English visitors who sat to him for busts; among his larger pieces belonging to this early period perhaps the most important is the Mercury and Venus chiding Cupid. Having returned to England in 1770, he was admitted an associate of the Royal Academy in 1771, and elected a member in the following year. By this time he had become known to George III., whose bust he shortly afterwards executed, and henceforward, until about 1816, he was continually and very profitably employed as the most fashionable portrait sculptor of his day. His busts were on all hands acknowledged to be excellent likenesses, and there was generally a softness in the expression and a gracefulness in the handling which never failed to please. He himself thought highly of his early portrait of Sterne. Among many others may be specially named those of Pitt, Fox, the prince of Wales (afterwards George IV.), Canning, Perceval, Benjamin West, and Lords Castlereagh, Aberdeen, Erskine, Egremont, and Liverpool. He also found leisure to elaborate a number of marble groups and statues, amongst which may be mentioned those of Bacchus, Venus taking off her Sandal, Hope leaning on an Urn, Juno, ...