Cast in sections and put together using dowels.

In 1993 the sculpture fell off its pedestal, dislodging almost all the components. Most of the dowels holding the pieces together had probably either been cracked or broken by internal stress prior to the fall. The work was restored in 1993. In 2000 stains caused by dissolved copper ions had appeared on the temporary base. The surface acquired an irregular appearance as the result of the patina applied in 1993. Vandals pushed the sculpture off its pedestal in 2001, which damaged the patina, particularly in the face. In addition, all the components were again dislodged. In 2012-13 the piece was restored.

Cast commissioned by the Rijksmuseum, 1900¹¹Verslagen 1900, p. 3.

Object number: BK-18754

Matthijs (‘Mathieu’) Kessels (1784-1836) ranks as one of the Netherlands’ most important neoclassical sculptors. When he was young he pursued international studies in Paris and St Petersburg, and in 1817 he went to Rome, to be apprenticed to Berthel Thorvaldsen (1770-1844).²²Biographical data sourced mainly from W. Bergé, Heimwee naar de klassieken: De beelden van Mathieu Kessels en zijn tijdgenoten, 1815-1840, exh. cat. Den Bosch (Noordbrabants Museum) 1994-95, pp. 31-48. For Kessels’s oeuvre catalogue, see ibid., pp. 183-207. In 1819 he won the prestigious contest for a sculpture portraying St Sebastian staged by the Accademia di San Luca, with Antonio Canova (1757-1822) as the foremost jury member. King William I of the Netherlands then awarded him with a two-year grant. Kessels was still living in Rome when he died in middle age, in 1836.

Soon after 1819 Kessels was garnering considerable success as an independent sculptor and received numerous commissions, also from European countries other than Italy and the Netherlands. In 1829 he was appointed professor at the art academy in Rome. Like Thorvaldsen, Kessels was an adherent of Winckelmann’s strict neoclassical aesthetic. He was to remain true to those principles until late in the 1820s, after which they made way for a more sensitive approach which was more in keeping with the spirit of Romanticism.

The Discus Thrower still dates from Kessels’s purely classicist period and is one of his most successful and best-known creations. In the spirit of his age, he based his work on an existing classical sculpture – in this case Roman copies of Myron’s famous Discobolos – but completely altered the original composition. Instead of portraying the athlete in the process of throwing the discus, as in the classical versions, Kessels opted for the moment of absolute concentration just preceding it. The preference to depict the instant of controlled tension before, or specifically the calm after the action is typical of art in the neoclassical period. Before creating his Discus Thrower Kessels had already made a sculpture of a Resting Discus Thrower.³³W. Bergé, Heimwee naar de klassieken: De beelden van Mathieu Kessels en zijn tijdgenoten, 1815-1840, exh. cat. Den Bosch (Noordbrabants Museum) 1994-95, no. 4. Both compositions were greatly admired by his contemporaries.⁴⁴W. Bergé, Heimwee naar de klassieken: De beelden van Mathieu Kessels en zijn tijdgenoten, 1815-1840, exh. cat. Den Bosch (Noordbrabants Museum) 1994-95, pp. 69-70. Another version, with the discus thrower retrieving his discus from the ground, got no further than the design stage.⁵⁵W. Bergé, Heimwee naar de klassieken: De beelden van Mathieu Kessels en zijn tijdgenoten, 1815-1840, exh. cat. Den Bosch (Noordbrabants Museum) 1994-95, no. K42.

The original plaster model of the present Discus Thrower must have come about round 1822.⁶⁶Brussels, Royal Museums of Fine Arts, inv. no. 484, see W. Bergé, Heimwee naar de klassieken: De beelden van Mathieu Kessels en zijn tijdgenoten, 1815-1840, exh. cat. Den Bosch (Noordbrabants Museum) 1994-95, no. K37 and KIK-IRPA object no. 20014786. On December 28th that year the Duke of Devonshire, an important collector of neoclassical sculpture, may have seen it during a visit to Kessels’s workshop. He noted for that day in his diary: ‘I met a Dutch sculptor who has great merit, he had two excellent statues, one a Discobolus […], the other a Cupid.’⁷⁷J. Kenworthy-Browne, ‘A Ducal Patron of Sculptors’, Apollo 96 (1972), pp. 322-31, esp. p. 326. In any case, during a subsequent visit to Rome from 3 November 1823 to 24 April 1824, the Duke ordered a marble version of the present Discus Thrower, which he described as: ‘very clever and deserving; and I could not resist’.⁸⁸J. Kenworthy-Browne, ‘A Ducal Patron of Sculptors’, Apollo 96 (1972), pp. 322-31, esp. pp. 327-28. The marble (fig. a) was realized in 1828 and since 1834 has stood in the Sculpture Gallery of Chatsworth House (the gallery was completed in that year), among works by Canova and Thorvaldsen.⁹⁹J. van Lennep, Catalogus van beeldhouwkunst: Kunstenaars geboren tussen 1750 en 1882, coll. cat. Brussels (Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium) 1992, p. 246. See also A. Yarrington and C. Noble. ‘“Like a Poet’s Dreams”; the redisplay of the 6th Duke of Devonshire’s Sculpture Gallery at Chatsworth’, Apollo 170 (2009), pp. 46-53 and A. Yarrington, ‘Canova and Thorvaldsen at Chatsworth’, in D. Dethloff et al. (eds.), Burning Bright: Essays in Honour of David Bindman¸ London 2015, pp. 77-87. The original plaster model can be found, together with 72 other works from Kessels’s estate, in de Royal Museums of Fine Arts in Brussels.¹⁰¹⁰Brussels, Royal Museums of Fine Arts, inv. no. 523, see W. Bergé, Heimwee naar de klassieken: De beelden van Mathieu Kessels en zijn tijdgenoten, 1815-1840, exh. cat. Den Bosch (Noordbrabants Museum) 1994-95, no. K40 and KIK-IRPA object no. 20058810.

Not long afterwards, the Earl of Pembroke ordered a marble reduction of the sculpture (present whereabouts unknown), the plaster model of which is also housed in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium.¹¹¹¹Brussels, Royal Museums of Fine Arts, inv. no. 485, see W. Bergé, Heimwee naar de klassieken: De beelden van Mathieu Kessels en zijn tijdgenoten, 1815-1840, exh. cat. Den Bosch (Noordbrabants Museum) 1994-95, nos. 5 and K39 and KIK-IRPA object no. 20014939. In 1825, at an exhibition of living masters in Haarlem, Kessels presented a plaster cast of this smaller version.¹²¹²Lijst der schilder- en beeldhouwwerken van nog in leven zijnde Noord-Nederlandsche meesters, welke zijn toegelaten tot de tentoonstelling te Haarlem, van den jare 1825, exh. cat. Haarlem 1825, no. 210. That item can probably be identified as the piece (present whereabouts unknown) Kessels donated to the Klasse der Schoone Kunsten of the Koninklijk Nederlandsch Instituut in Amsterdam that year, by way of thanks for his appointment in 1824 as a fellow member.¹³¹³W. Bergé, Heimwee naar de klassieken: De beelden van Mathieu Kessels en zijn tijdgenoten, 1815-1840, exh. cat. Den Bosch (Noordbrabants Museum) 1994-95, p. 70 and no. K41.

The present bronze is one of two casts made of Kessels’s large Discus Thrower by the Brussels Compagnie des Bronzes (casting company). The Rijksmuseum ordered it round 1900 to adorn the museum garden. The other bronze dates from 1862 and stands in the garden of the Academy Palace in Brussels.¹⁴¹⁴C. Engelen and M. Marx, Beeldhouwkunst in België vanaf 1830 (Algemeen Rijksarchief en Rijksarchief in de provincien, Studia 90), 3 vols., Leuven 2002, vol. 2, p. 999 (ill.). For both casts the Compagnie probably used the afore-mentioned plaster model dating from round 1822 which was also situated in that city.

Bieke van der Mark, 2026

J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 440, with earlier literature; J. van Lennep, Catalogus van beeldhouwkunst: Kunstenaars geboren tussen 1750 en 1882, coll. cat. Brussels (Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium) 1992, p. 246; W. Bergé, Heimwee naar de klassieken: De beelden van Mathieu Kessels en zijn tijdgenoten, 1815-1840, exh. cat. Den Bosch (Noordbrabants Museum) 1994-95, p. 70; J. Pouls, ‘Kessels, Europese kunstenaars uit ‘Limburg’ in de negentiende eeuw’, De Maasgouw 134 (2015) 3, pp. 110-21, esp. p. 118

B. van der Mark, 2026, 'Compagnie des Bronzes, Discus Thrower (Discobolus), Brussels, 1900', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200116117