This remarkable black basalt Infant Hercules with the Serpent belongs to a select group of large Neoclassical figures produced during the eleven-year partnership between Josiah Wedgwood and Thomas Bentley. These works, noteworthy for their impressive scale, exceptional rarity and the painstaking difficulty involved in their production, embody the pinnacle of Wedgwood and Bentley’s ambitions to inject their Staffordshire ceramics into the London sculpture market. The Infant Hercules, modeled life-sized and pinning a large snake to the ground, narrates an episode in the demigod’s early life. In the myth, the jealous goddess Hera, incensed by Zeus’s infidelity, dispatches two monstrous serpents to devour the son born to him by the mortal Alcmene. When the mythical beasts attack the young Hercules in his crib, the child effortlessly strangles them, revealing his superhuman strength even in infancy.

THE ‘ANTIQUE TASTE’ AND WEDGWOOD’S BLACK BASALT

Wedgwood and Bentley, shrewd entrepreneurs, were quick to embrace the commercial possibilities of the ‘Antique taste’ that captivated fashionable English society in the second half of the 18^th century. The novel decorative style, later called ‘Neoclassical’, gained new heights of popularity with the rediscoveries of Herculaneum in 1738 and Pompeii in 1748, and its adoption by the era's elite tastemakers began a great increase in demand for objects, sculpture included, from Classical Antiquity. Wedgwood, who keenly understood the power of words to create brand image, introduced his black-bodied wares in 1768 and christened them ‘Etruscan’, possibly in reference to the black-bodied pottery being excavated in Italy, or perhaps simply to align them with the current fashion. In either case, Wedgwood's promotional materials sought to associate the black ceramics more with statuary than with the ‘low art’ of pottery, initially positioning it as a substitute for bronze (early examples were treated with a metallic powder in imitation of the revered cast medium) and later, as a replacement for carved stone. By 1773, Wedgwood and Bentley had renamed their material ‘Basaltes’, and wrote, in that year’s trade catalogue, a direct appeal to collectors of ancient artifacts: “The black Composition, having the Appearance of antique Bronze, and so nearly agreeing in Properties with the Basaltes of the Ægyptians, no Substance can be better than this for Busts, Sphinxes, small Statues &c.”

THE INFANT HERCULES AND THE SCULPTURE MARKET

The Infant Hercules epitomizes Wedgwood and Bentley’s ambitions to disrupt the contemporary sculpture market, appealing to aficionados of the ‘Antique’ taste while surpassing their competitors, the London sculpture shops, in technical ability and exclusivity. They were entering a market crowded with vendors turning out a surfeit of inexpensive figures, typically plaster, produced ad infinitum from molds based on Classical originals. To gain an edge in the market, their firm would need to demonstrate its superiority in every area possible, including the use of exciting novel materials, superior technical quality and exclusivity of models.

The Infant Hercules indeed owes its basic form to an ancient prototype, but in its deviations from the original, reveals Wedgwood and Bentley’s savvy business sense and understanding of their clientele. The figure’s basic pose derives from a Hellenistic bronze of a boy holding a goose, of which many Roman-era copies in marble and terracotta have survived (fig. 1). An invoice dated May 1770 records Wedgwood and Bentley’s acquisition of the model from the London firm of James Hoskins and Samuel Euclid Oliver, along with molds for comparably large figures of the sleeping god Morpheus and the Cyclops Polyphemus (see A. Kelly, Decorative Wedgwood in Architecture & Furniture, New York, 1965, p. 31). David Buten notes that the 1770 invoice specifies a fee for “finishing the Infant Hercules for moulding,” and constructing the mold, but not modeling the figure itself. He posits that the Infant Hercules was modeled by a sculptor named Theodore Parker, before being sent to Hoskins and Oliver to be cast as a mold, citing an invoice sent by Wedgwood to Parker dated 7 October 1769 that lists “A statue of Hercules” among charges for sculpting various figures. See D. Buten, op. cit., p. 119, cat. no. 98 and E. Meteyard, The Life of Josiah Wedgwood, from his Private Correspondence and Family Papers, II, London, 1865, p. 92.

Once in Wedgwood’s possession, the mold from Hoskins and Oliver would then have been reworked, allowing the factory to enlarge the model and to ensure the highest quality by recreating any details that may have been lost in generations of casts and re-casts preceding the creation of the final mold. Wedgwood himself, in a letter to Bentley dated 24 August 1770, lamented the expense and difficulty of this reworking, but nonetheless considered it necessary:

We have made a Boy (Autumn) from the mould Hoskins sent us but cannot find any pedestal, or ground for it to lye upon & that sent for the infant Hercules we cannot make it fit! ... The making of these figures out of such moulds as these sent us is an endless work, for they are all to be model'd over again, & our Statuaries are not qualified for such a task, but if we have the remainder of the moulds I wrote for in my last we shall make one of each sort, but I fear they will be a sacrifice to shew & not to proffitt. (Reproduced in K. Euphemia, Lady Farrer, née Wedgwood, ed., Letters of Josiah Wedgwood, 1762 to 1770, London, 1906, p. 365).

The creation of a very large figure group such as the Infant Hercules was therefore enormously labor-intensive. And yet, at each stage of the process, Wedgwood chose to complicate the project. Instead of casting a straightforward reproduction of the ancient Boy with a Goose, he guaranteed his clients an exclusive model and a recognizable mythological subject by engaging a sculptor, possibly Parker, to transform the bird into a serpent and the unnamed boy into Hercules himself. Executing the figure in black basalt ensured alignment with fashionable tastes. The size and complexity of the group, with its sinuous serpent and superbly-modeled figure, would have required exceptional skill to mold and fire successfully. Wedgwood’s 1770 letter to Bentley may indeed reveal the true purpose of these rare, large basalt figures: “to shew & not to proffitt”, or to showcase the unmatched abilities of Wedgwood and Bentley’s manufactory, drawing fame and prestige to their firm, even if they might entail a financial loss.

THE INFANT HERCULES: A RARE MODEL

Among the documented examples of this model, a mere three are known to have been produced in Wedgwood’s lifetime, with the present lot standing as the only known surviving example, as well as the only recorded without significant kiln flaws. The model was offered in the firm's trade catalogues from 1773, 1774, 1777 and 1787 as an “Infant Hercules, with the serpent 20 inches high, by 21 broad”. One example, described as “A fine Figure of young Hercules choking the Serpents ; the Ground imperfect" was sold by Christie's, London, 7 December 1781, on the fifth day of the liquidation sales held after Bentley’s death. In 1861, the famed glassmaker Apsley Pellatt loaned another Infant Hercules to an exhibition at the Ironmongers’ Hall, London, though his was documented with a defective right arm, with the Wedgwood historian Eliza Meteyard writing of it in the 1870s: “the arm thrusting back the serpent has evidently been distorted in the fire" and describing it as "probably in some degree a ‘waster’”(E. Meteyard, The Wedgwood Handbook, London, 1875, pp. 214-215). A 19^th-century example was produced by Wedgwood & Brown for display at the 1851 Crystal Palace Exhibition, part of a group reproducing the finest wares from the lifetime of Josiah Wedgwood I. Following this exhibition, the firm is known to have offered the model in Parian or “Carrara” ware (see M. Batkin, Wedgwood Ceramics, 1846-1959: A New Appraisal, London, 1982, p. 19). The present example in basalt is first documented in an auction of the Horace Townsend collection at the American Art Galleries, New York, 16-17 February 1914, and was sold again in the same rooms from the collection of Timothy F. Crowley, 6-7 December 1915, with Townsend apparently writing the catalogues for both sales.

The Infant Hercules serves not only as a striking evocation of the myth, but also, in its innovation upon Classical prototypes and its early use of the novel black basalt medium, as an embodiment of the integral role held by sculpture in the fashionable 'Antique Taste' of the late 18^th century. It stands as the epitome of Wedgwood’s unwavering commitment to invention, and his aspiration to provide the highest standard of quality to his most discerning clientele.