Art Institute of Chicago

Young Man with a Candle, from Life-Sized Heads

Thomas Frye

Date

1760

Medium

Mezzotint in black on ivory laid paper

Culture

Ireland

Department

Prints and Drawings

Institution

Art Institute of Chicago

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.

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