Neo-neoclassicism: how Wilton's bust of Hollis launched David Hicks

This article concerns an important eighteenth-century British marble portrait bust that remained misidentified as to its sitter and unidentified as to its sculptor during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. As well as 'losing its identity', the bust had become deeply unfashionable by 1950, with a monetary value at that time measured only in shillings. Nevertheless, recent research on its provenance has demonstrated how the bust was then employed as part of a scheme to create one of the most fashionable, and widely publicized, interiors of the early 1950s. That interior launched the internationally successful career of one of the most successful British designers of the 1950s-70s, David Hicks.