Young Man with a Candle, from Life-Sized Heads

Prints and Drawings

1760

Thomas Frye
Irish, 1710-1762

Features gone ashen and eyes bulging, Thomas Frye’s anonymous figure brandishes a candlestick. The embodiment of Romantic terror, he may very well have seen a ghost or encountered other scientifically inexplicable horrors. Backed against an unforgiving and ancient stone wall, he suggests a tragic hero like the one in the first Gothic novel, Horace Walpole’s soon-to-be published Castle of Otranto. Joseph Wright of Derby copied some of Frye’s heads for his Experiment with the Air Pump; this frightened youth could have inspired the wild-haired philosopher at center stage.

Status: Currently Off View
Department: Prints and Drawings

Artist: Thomas Frye
Title: Young Man with a Candle, from Life-Sized Heads
Place: Ireland (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 1760
Medium: Mezzotint in black on ivory laid paper
Dimensions: Image: 47.2 × 35.1 cm (18 5/8 × 13 7/8 in.); Sheet: 50.5 × 36 cm (19 15/16 × 14 3/16 in.)
Credit Line: Gift of Dorothy Braude Edinburg to the Harry B. and Bessie K. Braude Memorial Collection
Reference Number: 2013.722
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/129436/manifest.json

Chaloner Smith 19 only state

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.

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IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

Learn more.