26 Facts About John Flaxman

John Flaxman was a British sculptor and draughtsman, and a leading figure in British and European Neoclassicism.

John Flaxman spent several years in Rome, where he produced his first book illustrations.

John Flaxman's father, 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.

John Flaxman was a sickly child, high-shouldered, with a head too large for his body.

John Flaxman's mother died when he was nine, and his father married Elisabeth Gordon in 1763.

John Flaxman 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.

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 John 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.

John Flaxman continued to work diligently, both as a student and as an exhibitor at the academy, with occasional attempts at painting.

John Flaxman's 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.

In 1782, aged 27, John Flaxman married Anne Denman, who was to assist him throughout his career.

John 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.

John Flaxman 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.

John Flaxman's sketchbooks show that while there he studied not only Classical, but Medieval and Renaissance art.

John Flaxman created one hundred and eleven illustrations to Dante's Divine Comedy which served as an inspiration for such artists as Goya and Ingres, and were used as an academic source for 19th-century art students.

John Flaxman had originally intended to stay in Italy for little more than two years, but was detained by a commission for a marble group of the Fury of Athamas for Frederick Hervey, 4th Earl of Bristol and Bishop of Derry, which proved troublesome.

John Flaxman exhibited work at the academy annually, occasionally showing a public monument in the round, like those of Pasquale Paoli or Captain Montague for Westminster Abbey, of Sir William Jones for University College, Oxford, 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.

John Flaxman made a large number of these smaller funerary monuments; his work was in great demand, and he did not charge particularly high prices.

John Flaxman was a thorough and judicious teacher, and his lectures were often reprinted.

John Flaxman was commissioned to create the monument to Matthew Boulton, by Boulton's son, which is on the north wall of the sanctuary of St Mary's Church, Handsworth, Birmingham, where Boulton is buried.

When John Flaxman first saw them at Elgin's house in 1807, he advised against their restoration.

John Flaxman's name is listed as one of the important lost graves on the Burdett Coutts Memorial in Old St Pancras Churchyard.

John Flaxman was buried at St Giles' Cemetery, King's Road, beside his wife Anne and his sister Mary Ann Flaxman.

Early in his career, John Flaxman made his works in the form of small models which his assistants would scale up when making the finished marble versions.

John Flaxman thoroughly understood relief, and it gave better scope for his particular talents.

John Flaxman's compositions are best studied in the casts from his studio sketches, of which a comprehensive collection is preserved in the Flaxman gallery at University College, London.

The principal public collections of John Flaxman's work are at University College London, in the British Museum, and the Victoria and Albert Museum.