David Saywell, then Art Detective Officer, wrote to the collection: ‘Although that mentions the bust being life size, and yours clearly is not, [it] mentions a model of the bust being on display at 76 Harley Street. Do you think that this is your sculpture?’

Andrew Neilson, then Collections Care Officer, replied:
'Gabe [former Curator, Gabrielle Gale] and I have looked at the information you have kindly put forward to suggest that our plaster bust of Beethoven may be the work of the sculptor Samuel Nixon. And whilst we agree that there are similarities between our bust and Samuel Nixon’s, we do not feel there is enough evidence for us to confidently say that he is the creator of our plaster bust of Beethoven.

Something that stood out for me when looking closer at our bust was that the style, size and inscription in particular is very similar to that of another series of miniature busts in our collection: (I’ve included links to the busts on Art UK and our collections site)

2008.2453
Sculpture: Bust of Franz Schubert. Plaster. https://tinyurl.com/y3arx9uu (Art UK)
https://tinyurl.com/3jebpb57 (Royal Academy of Music)

2008.2454
Sculpture: Bust of Robert Schumann. Plaster.
https://tinyurl.com/26yy3ecr (Art UK)
https://tinyurl.com/2ary7hz7 (Royal Academy of Music)

2008.2455
Sculpture: Bust of Johann Sebastian Bach. Plaster.
https://tinyurl.com/42v6c426 (Art UK)
https://tinyurl.com/5n7hnbz5 (Royal Academy of Music)

2008.2456
Sculpture: Bust of George Frideric Handel. Plaster.
https://tinyurl.com/32k9sfut (Art UK)
https://tinyurl.com/4um5medt (Royal Academy of Music)

These four busts arrived at the Academy in 2006 as part of a gift from the Estate of Phyllis Roberts. However, the bust of Beethoven is part of our McCann Collection, which arrived at the Academy in 1999. The fact that all five busts are very similar, but arrived separately from two unrelated donors suggests to us that these may have been mass produced.

Unfortunately, we have no information about the creator or dates of creation of the four busts donated to us by the Estate of Phyllis Roberts, nor is there is further information in our acquisition notes about the Beethoven bust in our McCann collection acquisition files.

In light of the similarities between the Beethoven bust and the other four busts I’ve posted links to above, do you think it would be worth further investigating the identity of the creator of this bust, and potentially the other four on Art Detective?

In the meantime, we would prefer that the creator remained unknown on Art UK as we don’t feel we have enough evidence to prove that Samuel Nixon was the sculptor that created our bust.'

Is there a link to the bust known to be by Nixon?

This bust is quite similar to a Parian ware bust of Beethoven that seems to have once been featured on the Drove House Antiques website. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to find a link to it.

I wonder if this could be Parian ware rather than plaster. The small size and bland, rather generic face suggest a mass-produced item.