John Flaxman - Later Life

Later Life

The rest of Flaxman's life was uneventful, and his work brought sufficient rewards and a good reputation, being praised by Antonio Canova, Schlegel and Henry Fuseli. He took as his pupil a son of William Hayley's, who became ill and died. In 1797 he was made an associate of the Royal Academy. Every year he exhibited work of one class or another: occasionally 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; more often memorials for churches, with symbolic Acts of Mercy or illustrations of Scripture texts, both commonly in low relief (1801), Miss Cromwell, Chichester (1800), Mrs Knight, Milton, Cambridge (1802), and many more; and these pious labours he would vary from time to time with a classical piece like those of his earliest predilection. Soon after his election as associate, he published a scheme, half grandiose, half childish, for a monument to be erected on Greenwich Hill, in the shape of a Britannia 200 ft (61 m). high, in honour of the naval victories of his country.

In 1800 he was elected a full Academician. During the peace of Amiens he went to Paris to see the despoiled treasures collected there, but bore himself according to the spirit of protest that was in him. The next event which makes any mark in his life is his appointment to a chair specially created for him by the Royal Academy, the chair of Sculpture: this took place in 1810. There is ample evidence of his thoroughness and judiciousness as a teacher in the Academy schools, and his professorial lectures have been often reprinted. With many excellent observations, and with one singular merit — that of doing justice, as in those days justice was hardly ever done, to the sculpture of the medieval schools — these lectures lack point and felicity of expression, just as they are reported to have lacked fire in delivery, and are somewhat heavy reading. The most important works that occupied Flaxman in the years next following this appointment were the monument to Mrs Baring in Micheldever church, the richest of all his monuments in relief (1805–1811); that for the Worsley family at Campsall church, Yorkshire, which is the next richest; those to Sir Joshua Reynolds for St Paul's (1807); to Captain Webbe for India (1810); to Captains Walker and Beckett for Leeds (1811); to Lord Cornwallis for Prince of Wales's Island (1812); and to Sir John Moore for Glasgow (1813). At this time the antiquarian world was much occupied with the vexed question of the merits of the Elgin marbles, and Flaxman was one of those whose evidence before the parliamentary commission had most weight in favour of the purchase which was ultimately effected in 1816.

After his Roman period he produced fewer outline designs for the engraver except three for William Cowper's translations of the Latin poems of John Milton (1810). Other sets of outline illustrations drawn about the same time, but not published, were one for the Pilgrim's Progress, and one for a Chinese tale in verse, "The Casket", which he wrote himself for his family. In 1817 we find him returning to his old practice of classical outline illustrations and publishing the happiest of all his series in that kind, the designs to Hesiod, excellently engraved by the sympathetic hand of Blake, Immediately afterwards he was much engaged designing for the goldsmiths — a testimonial cup in honour of John Kemble, and following that, the famous and beautiful (though quite un-Homeric) "Shield of Achilles". Almost at the same time he undertook a frieze of "Peace, Liberty and Plenty," for the Duke of Bedford's sculpture gallery at Woburn Abbey, and an heroic group of Michael overthrowing Satan, for Lord Egremont's Petworth House. His literary industry at the same time is shown by several articles on art and archaeology contributed to article and drawings on sculpture to Rees's Cyclopaedia (1802–1819).

He was commissioned to create the monument to Matthew Boulton (died 1809), by Boulton's son, which is on the north wall of the sanctuary of St. Mary's Church, Handsworth, Birmingham, where Boulton is buried. It includes a marble bust of Boulton, set in a circular opening above two putti, one holding an engraving of the Soho Manufactory.