John Flaxman (1755 - 1826). John Flaxman 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, was well known as a moulder and seller of plaster casts at the sign of the Golden Head, New Street, Covent Garden, London. His wife's maiden name was Lee, and they had two children, 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 remarried. He 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; four portrait models in wax; a terracotta bust, a wax figure of a child, an historical figure; a figure of Comedy; and a relief of a Vestal. 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. From 1775 he was employed by the potter Josiah Wedgwood and his partner Bentley, for whom his father had also done some work, modelling reliefs for use on the company's jasperware and basaltware. The usual procedure was to model the reliefs in wax on slate or glass grounds before they cast for production. D'Hancarville's engravings of Sir William Hamilton's collection of ancient Greek vases were an important influence on his work. His designs included the Apotheosis of Homer, later used for a vase; Hercules in the Garden of Hesperides; a large range of small bas-reliefs of which The Dancing Hours proved especially popular; library busts, portrait medallions, and a chess set. By 1780 Flaxman had also begun to earn money by sculpting grave monuments. His early memorials included those to Thomas Chatterton in the church of St Mary Redcliffe in Bristol, Mrs Morley in Gloucester Cathedral, and the Rev. Thomas and Mrs Margaret Ball in Chichester Cathedral. During the rest of Flaxman's career memorial bas-reliefs of this type made up the bulk of his output, and are to be found in many churches throughout England. One example, the monument to George Steevens, originally in St Matthais Old Church, is now in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. His best monumental work was admired for its pathos and simplicity, and for the combination of a truly Greek instinct for rhythmical design and composition with a spirit of domestic tenderness and innocence. In 1782, aged 27, Flaxman married Anne 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. In 1787, five years after their marriage, Flaxman and his wife set off for Rome, on a journey partly funded by Wedgwood. His activities in the city included supervising a group of modellers employed by Wedgwood, although he no longer made any work for the potter himself. His sketchbooks show that while there he studied not only Classical, but also Medieval and Renaissance art.