Джон Флаксман: Жизнь и творчество британского скульптора и рисовальщика.

British sculptor and draughtsman (1755–1826)

John Flaxman (6 July 1755 – 7 December 1826) was a British sculptor and draughtsman, and a leading figure in British and European Neoclassicism. Early in his career, he worked as a modeller for Josiah Wedgwood's pottery. He spent several years in Rome, where he produced his first book illustrations. He was a prolific maker of funerary monuments.

He was born in York. His father, also named John (1726–1803), was well known as a moulder and seller of plaster casts at the sign of the Golden Head, New Street, Covent Garden, London. His first wife's maiden name was Lee, and they had two sons, William and John. Within six months of John's birth, the family returned to London. He was a sickly child, high shouldered, with a head too large for his body. His mother died when he was nine, and his father married Elisabeth Gordon in 1763. John had little schooling and was largely self educated. He took delight in drawing and modelling from his father's stock in trade, and studied translations from classical literature in an effort to understand them. His father's customers helped him with books, advice, and later with commissions. Particularly significant were the painter George Romney, and a cultivated clergyman, Anthony Stephen Mathew and his wife Mrs. Mathew, in whose house in Rathbone Place the young Flaxman used to meet the best "blue stocking" society of the day and, among those his own age, the artists William Blake and Thomas Stothard, who became his closest friends. At the age of 12 he won the first prize of the Society of Arts for a medallion, and exhibited in the gallery of the Free Society of Artists; at 15 he won a second prize from the Society of Arts showed at the Royal Academy for the first time. In the same year, 1770, he entered the academy as a student and won the silver medal. In the competition for the gold medal of the academy in 1772, however, Flaxman was defeated, the prize being awarded by the president, Sir Joshua Reynolds, to a competitor named Engleheart. This episode seemed to help cure Flaxman of a tendency to conceit which led Thomas Wedgwood V to say of him in 1775, "It is but a few years since he was a most supreme coxcomb." He continued to work diligently, both as a student and as an exhibitor at the academy, with occasional attempts at painting. To the academy he contributed a wax model of Neptune (1770); four portrait models in wax (1771); a terracotta bust, a wax figure of a child, a historical figure (1772); a figure of Comedy; and a relief of a Vestal (1773). During this period he received a commission from a friend of the Mathew family for a statue of Alexander the Great, but he was unable to obtain a regular income from private contracts.

In 1782, aged 27, Flaxman married Anne ("Nancy") Denman, who was to assist him throughout his career. She was well educated, and a devoted companion. They set up house in Wardour Street, and usually spent their summer holidays as guests of the poet William Hayley, at Eartham in Sussex. Flaxman took a shine to the Denman family, particularly Nancy's younger sister Maria, whom he trained as a sculptor, and to whom he left a great deal in his will. He also employed Nancy's brother Thomas Denman in his studio and it was Denman who completed the various unfinished sculptures in Flaxman's studio after his death. Flaxman's portrait of Maria is held in the Soane Museum.

During their homeward journey, the Flaxmans travelled through central and northern Italy. On their return they took a house in Buckingham Street, Fitzroy Square, which they never left. Buckingham Street has since been renamed Greenwell Street, W1; there is a plaque to Flaxman on the front wall of no.7 identifying this as the site of the house where Flaxman lived. Immediately after his return the sculptor published a protest against the scheme (already considered by the French Directory and carried out two years later by Napoleon) to set up a vast central museum of art at Paris to contain works looted from across Europe. Despite this, he later took take advantage of the Peace of Amiens to go to Paris to see the despoiled treasures collected there. While still in Rome, Flaxman had sent home models for several sepulchral monuments, including one in relief for the poet William Collins in Chichester cathedral, and one in the round for Lord Mansfield in Westminster Abbey. In 1797 he was made an associate of the Royal Academy. He exhibited work at the academy annually, occasionally showing a public monument in the round, like those of Pasquale Paoli (1798) or Captain Montague (1802) for Westminster Abbey, of Sir William Jones for University College, Oxford (1797–1801), of Nelson or Howe for St Paul's Cathedral, but more often memorials for churches, with symbolic Acts of Mercy or illustrations of biblical texts, usually in low relief. He made a large number of these smaller funerary monuments; his work was in great demand, and he did not charge particularly high prices. It includes a marble bust of Boulton, set in a circular opening above two putti, one holding an engraving of the Soho Manufactory. Around this time there was much debate over the merits of the sculptures from the Parthenon in Athens, which had been brought to Britain by Lord Elgin, and were hence popularly known as the Elgin marbles. When Flaxman first saw them at Elgin's house in 1807, he advised against their restoration. Flaxman's statements in favour of their purchase by the government to a parliamentary commission carried considerable weight; the sculptures were eventually bought in 1816. His designs for the friezes of Ancient Drama and Modern Drama, for the facade of the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, made in 1809 and carved by John Charles Felix Rossi, provide an early example of the direct influence of the marbles on British sculpture. In the years immediately following his Roman period he produced fewer outline designs for publication, except three for William Cowper's translations of the Latin poems of John Milton (1810). In 1817, however, he returned to the genre, publishing a set of designs to Hesiod, which were engraved by Blake. He also designed work for goldsmiths at around this time—a testimonial cup in honour of John Kemble, and the famous and beautiful (though quite un Homeric) "Shield of Achilles" designed between 1810 and 1817 for Rundell, Bridge and Rundell. Other late works included a frieze of Peace, Liberty and Plenty, for the Duke of Bedford's sculpture gallery at Woburn Abbey, and a heroic group of St Michael overthrowing Satan, for Lord Egremont's Petworth House, delivered after Flaxman's death. He also wrote several articles on art and archaeology for Rees's Cyclopædia (1819–20). In the last six years of his life, Flaxman designed decorations for the facades of Buckingham Palace. Some of his drawings for this commission are now held by the Royal Collection Trust. Flaxman Terrace in Bloomsbury, London, is named after him. The Chelsea telephone exchange that became 020 7352 was also named after him, the digits 352 still corresponding to the old three letter dialling code FLA.

Most of the carving of his works was carried out by assistants; Margaret Whinney thought that, as a result, "the execution of some of his marbles is a little dull" but that "his plaster models, cast from his own designs in clay, frequently show more sensitive handling".

The principal public collections of Flaxman's work are at University College London, in the British Museum, and the Victoria and Albert Museum. University College London also holds archival material belonging to Flaxman and a collection of books illustrated by him.