[Born at Norton, near Sheffield, 1781. Died in London, 1841. Aged 60.]
The first portrait sculptor of his day, but not equally famous for works
of imagination, the very few compositions of this kind that proceeded
from his chisel having been suggested to him by other more poetic minds.
Chantrey did not command astonishment, but compelled admiration by the
simplicity, beauty, and truth, that were stamped on all his productions.
His portraits are faithful, characteristic, and most artistic
representations; idealizing the individual; and in this branch of his
art he undoubtedly outstripped all rivals. His success was very great.
He began life as a carver’s apprentice, and was a journeyman carver in
London, where he helped with his own hand to furnish the dining-room of
Mr. Rogers, the poet--a room in which many times, in after life, he sat,
one of the most welcome and sociable of the guests there assembled.
Wealth and honour came to him earned by labour and perseverance; and the
fruits of his industry, amounting to £90,000, he bequeathed to the Royal
Academy, for the purchase of “works of fine art of the highest merit in
painting and sculpture,” such works “being executed within the shores of
Great Britain.” The bequest was worthy of a man whose mind, whose works,
whose habits, all bore the strong impress of the nation in which he was
born, and of the people from whose heart he had sprung.
[By his pupil, F. W. Smith.]
398A. FRANCIS CHANTREY. _Sculptor._
[Medallion by Heffernan.]