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George Bullock began his career as a sculptor but later established an important furnishing and cabinetmaking business, first in Liverpool then in London. For a short while, from April 1808, he was in partnership in Liverpool with Joseph Gandy, who had previously worked for Soane and in whose office John Soane junior was at the time a trainee. It was the antiquarian John Britton who prevailed upon Bullock to make a mould from the monument to Shakespeare at Stratford-upon-Avon in 1814. The exercise took longer than Bullock had anticipated but he wrote to Britton that he was pleased to give up the time from ‘my London affairs’ because he believed the bust to be an extremely accurate likeness of the Bard, having perceived ‘evident signs of its being taken from a cast’, by which he presumably meant a life or death mask.
Title
William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
Date
1814
Medium
plaster
Accession number
SC18
Acquisition method
acquired by Sir John Soane, before 1837
Work type
Bust
Inscription description
On the verso in relief in the plaster is the inscription: Moulded by Geo. Bullock / from the original / in the Church / at / Stratford / Dec. 1814 .