Modelled in the round and fired. Finished with a final coat. Iron trident with wooden head.

The left index finger is missing, as are some water plants. There is slight damage to the hem of the garment. The left foot and the right hand have been renewed.

…; collection Jonkheer Hugo Loudon (1860-1941), The Hague;¹¹Note RMA. ? his wife Anna Petronella Alida van Marken (1874-1953), 1941; ? her sale Amsterdam (Mak van Waay), 23-26 June 1953, no. 835, fl. 230, to the museum

Object number: BK-1953-21

The sculptor Willem Hendrik van der Wall (1716-1790) trained in his native city of Utrecht with Jacob Cressant (1685-after 1759/before 1766) and later with Jan Baptist Xavery (1697-1742).²²For Van der Wall, see L. Helmus, ‘Petrus en Paulus: Willem Hendrik van der Wall (Utrecht 1716-Utrecht 1790)’, Bulletin van de Vereniging Rembrandt 14 (2004), pp. 9-12and D. de Kool, ‘Willem Hendrik van de Wall (1716-1790): Een verdienstelijk beeldhouwer uit Utrecht’, Jaarboek Oud-Utrecht 2014, pp. 162-75. He adopted the style of his teachers: a Flemish-French orientated baroque, which, particularly in his religious work, was still firmly based on seventeenth-century Roman models of followers of Bernini. With Van der Wall that Roman influence is evident in his preference for fluttering and lavishly draped garments and a pronounced contrapposto in his figures’ poses. In his later years, these baroque tendencies would increasingly make way for a calmer style tying in with the contemporary classicist, academic architecture of Paris. A typical example of that work is his fully signed and dated (1782) marble Galateia.³³Utrecht, Centraal Museum, inv. no. 9922, see J. Klinckaert, De verzamelingen van het Centraal Museum Utrecht, vol. 3, Beeldhouwkunst tot 1850, coll. cat. Utrecht 1997, no. 380.

With his surly facial expression and fluttering cloak, this signed and dated Neptune (1757) is still characteristic of Van der Wall’s early, baroque style. The subject and rendering of the statuette are reminiscent of the terracotta (BK-NM-2939) made around 1746 by his teacher Cressant as a preliminary study for a marble Neptune formerly in Geneva.⁴⁴D. de Kool, ‘Het oeuvre van Jacobus Cressant in beeld’, Jaarboek Oud-Utrecht 2018, p. 142-63, esp. p. 152 (ill. below). Perhaps Van der Wall even derived Neptune’s pronounced contrapposto directly from that work. The position of the legs is almost identical in the two pieces. Van der Wall might well have made this terracotta as a model for a large statue in wood or stone (not realized, as far as we know). However, in view of the considerable refinement, it could also have constituted an independent small-scale sculpture. Whereas terracotta was applied hitherto almost exclusively for preliminary designs and models, in the eighteenth century it was increasingly used as a medium for autonomous work, and appreciated by the very virtue of its informal character and the growing fascination with the creative process.

The statue comes from the same The Hague collection as a comparable terracotta Mars in the Rijksmuseum (BK-1953-22), which is also ascribed to Van der Wall. Although the sculptures probably served as pendants, it is unlikely that the terracottas were conceived in that way or, as Leeuwenberg suggested, were part of a larger series of gods.⁵⁵Verslagen omtrent ’s Rijks verzamelingen van geschiedenis en kunst 1953, pp. 16-17. In that case, the figures would probably have had uniform plinths and that is certainly not the case here: the square base beneath Neptune is a little higher than that of Mars and has bevelled, not straight edges.

Bieke van der Mark and Frits Scholten, 2025

Verslagen omtrent ’s Rijks verzamelingen van geschiedenis en kunst 1953, pp. 16-17; J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 420b; D. de Kool, ‘Willem Hendrik van der Wall (1716-1790): Een verdienstelijk beeldhouwer uit Utrecht’, Jaarboek Oud-Utrecht 2014, pp. 162-75, esp. p. 170

B. van der Mark and F. Scholten, 2025, 'Willem Hendrik van der Wall, Neptune, Utrecht, 1757', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20035860