⁂ Please note, this drawing is sold unframed.

Deare (John, 1759-1798) Design for a relief of Cupid and Psyche, pen and black inks, on Italian laid paper without visible watermark, signed and dated 'Rome Sept. 1787', 195 x 255 mm (7 3/4 x 10 in), sheet laid onto paper support with ruled black ink borderlines under mount, unframed, 1787

Provenance:
Valentine Lawless, Lord Cloncurry (1773-1853); then by descent;
Anonymous sale;
Collection of John and Eileen Harris

Literature:
P. Fogelman, P. Fusco and S. Stock, ‘John Deare (1759– 1798): A British
Neoclassical Sculptor in Rome,’ The Sculpture Journal, iv, 2000, cat. no. 22, illus. p. 115.

⁂ An exceptionally rare example of a drawing by Deare for a sculptural relief, with the artist's distinctive finely cross-hatched pen lines achieving a virtuosic sense of depth and plasticity. We can trace no other examples of a drawing by the sculptor sold at auction since 1983, with only a handful of his sculptures having been sold.

Deare spent most of his short career in Rome producing decorative reliefs for the mansions of wealthy Brtitsh patrons. However, in his early career he was apprenticed in 1776 to Thomas Carter II, who worked in London. Later that year in December, he enrolled at the Royal Academy Schools, and Deare and two of his contemporaries, John Flaxman and Thomas Proctor, soon became known among the students for their fine draughtsmanship. Their efforts are said to have prompted Joseph Nollekens, who was then a visitor, to give up sketching altogether. It wasn't until 1785 when Deare jointly won the Academy's travelling student scholarship, that he set out for Italy. Deare visited both Bologna and Florence en route to arriving in Rome in the summer of 1785, where he remained for the rest of his life.

'One of the most innovative and talented of English Neoclassical sculptors, John Deare lived a short but intense life. A child prodigy, he died at the young age of thirty-eight; according to legend, he slept on a block of marble, hoping to find inspiration in his dreams' [Getty].