Thomas Banks's missing 'Cupid': the sculptor Thomas Banks is currently the subject of an exhibition at Sir John Soane's Museum. Its curator, Julius Bryant, tells the story of one of Banks's most celebrated works, purchased by Catherine the Great, which vanished during World War II

Apollo, Feb, 2005 by Julius Bryant

In 1941, to save a favourite work of art from advancing Nazi troops, the curator of Pavlovsk Palace, near Leningrad, buried a neo-classical statue, Cupid by Thomas Banks (1735-1805), next to its pedestal. Unfortunately, on the curator's return in 1944, no trace of the statue could be found. Further excavations conducted in the 1980s during the restoration of the gardens proved fruitless, leading to the conclusion that Cupid had been abducted to Germany. The sculpture had never been engraved but photographs (Figs. 1 and 2) and other documentation provided by today's curators at Pavlovsk are here published for the first time, in the hope that Banks's sculpture may be recognised, perhaps as Nazi loot, and repatriated. (1)

The loss of the sculpture was felt long before 1944, by Banks's contemporaries in Britain. In an account of his career published in his lifetime (and thus presumably based on an interview) The European Magazine described in 1790 the sculptor's international travels with his modern masterpiece. The anonymous writer describes from Banks's years in Rome:

   the chief of his works there ... a statue
   of Cupid, four feet and a half high, in
   the possession of the Empress of
   Russia. This figure was brought from
   Rome when he returned in 1779, and
   finished in London in 1780. The
   artist, being then unemployed,
   embarked with it for Petersburgh in
   June 1781, and arriving there in
   August, it was, by the
   recommendation of Lord
   --Malmesbury and Prince Potemkin,
   shown to the Empress, who
   purchased it for 4,000 roubles (about
   380 [pounds sterling] sterling), and ordered it to be
   placed in a building called the Grotto
   in the gardens at Czarsko-Zelo. He
   afterwards remained a year in
   Petersburgh, and made a model for a
   statue of the Empress, which he left
   in the possession of Prince
   Potemkin. (2)

Shortly after Banks's death on 2 February 1805, John Flaxman (1755-1826) wrote a 'discourse' on the older sculptor that he proposed to deliver to the Royal Academy, illustrated by 'the two basso-relievos, and the statue of Cupid, now before us'. (3) The bas-reliefs have been in Sir John Soane's Museum since 1830 but the original plaster for the Cupid (cast from the unfired modelling clay) has disappeared. (4) Two years later, the loss of the marble was lamented in a letter signed by 'An Englishman' published in The Director:

   every true lover of art must sincerely
   regret, that, of the labours of his
   classical chissel [sic], many are fixed
   in the oblivious aisles of distant
   village churches; others, in the
   solitude of country retreats; and
   above all, that his CUPID, a statue
   that would have been highly valued
   in the very best times of art, and
   might have stood, without fearing a
   competition, even on the steps of the
   Roman Capitol, was destined to
   vanish amid those impenetrable fogs,
   which extend their opaque curtain
   from the Gulf of Finland to the
   Sarmatian Lakes. (5)

The significance of Banks's Cupid lies in its status as the first free-standing marble sculpture of a poetical subject by the artist who came to be eulogised as the father of the British School of sculpture. Before Banks, commissions for sculptures in Britain produced busts, public statues, church monuments and decorative reliefs for overmantels and overdoors. Banks responded to the intellectual and patriotic aspirations of his age in raising sculpture to the status of art, independent of any illustrative or commemorative function. Following the foundation of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1768, he was the first sculptor (and only the second artist) to win the Academy's scholarship to Rome, where he remained from 1772 to 1779. Banks was ahead of his market, and had he succeeded in being paid by the patron who first commissioned Cupid, he would have continued his cosmopolitan career in Rome, and not left less than a year before the arrival of Canova.

Banks modelled Cupid on speculation, and had the misfortune to attract the interest of a patron who would prove to be the most notorious serial disappointer of artists, Frederick Hervey, Earl of Bristol and Bishop of Derry. (6) On 1 April 1778 the sculptor's wife wrote to the painter Ozias Humphry in London in optimistic tone: 'he has just finished a Model of Cupid, which is universally lik'd, & is order'd in marble by the Bishop of Derry'. (7) On 4 November Elizabeth Banks wrote to to Humphry again, only now in despair, exclaiming: 'the figure which the Reverend Father in God &c &c &c had ordered of Mr. B- he return'd on his hands, when almost compleated, (with the frivolous excuse of its being Improper for a Bishop to have a Naked figure in his house) together with a Basso-relevo & two heads quite finish'd'. (8) The bas-relief would have been either Thetis and her nymphs rising from the sea to console Achilles for the loss of Patroclus (Victoria & Albert Museum, London) or Alcyone and Ceyx (Lotherton Hall, Leeds City Art Galleries and Museums).