Details of Sculptor

Surname

Baily

Alternative Surname

First Name

Edward Hodges RA

Initial of Surname

B

Year of Birth/Baptism

1788

Flourished

Year of Death

1867

Biographical Details

Baily was admired by contemporaries principally for his ‘ideal’ works but is now best remembered for the iconic statue of Admiral Lord Nelson in Trafalgar Square. He was born in Bristol on 10 March 1788, the son of a talented ship’s carver (AJ, 1867, 170). At school he apparently showed more interest in carving portraits of his classmates than in following the curriculum and his first position, in a merchant’s counting-house, lasted only two years. He began his artistic career as a modeller of small busts in wax (AJ, 1867, 170), but was drawn to ‘a higher aspiration’ by John Bacon RA’s monument to Elizabeth Draper in Bristol Cathedral (AU, 1847, 260).
Early encouragement is said to have come from a young surgeon called Leigh, who lent him John Flaxman RA’s designs for Homer’s Iliad and commissioned from him two small groups based on the drawings. The results were so successful that Leigh recommended Baily to Flaxman, who accepted him as a pupil in 1807 (AJ, 1867, 170). Baily remained in Flaxman’s studio for seven and a half years and was apparently his favourite assistant.
In 1808, whilst living in Upper Cleveland Street, Baily was awarded a silver medal from the Society of Arts for a plaster cast of the Laocoon (113). The same year he joined the Royal Academy schools, where he won a silver medal in 1809, and the gold, with a prize of 50 guineas in 1811 for Hercules rescuing Alcestis from Orcas (329). His first exhibited work to attract attention was a figure of Apollo discharging his arrows against the Greeks (116), which led to his election as an associate member of the Royal Academy in 1817. His celebrated Eve at the fountain (119), said to have been designed as a handle for the lid of a soup tureen ordered by a City livery company (Builder 1867, 387), was exhibited in 1820 and the following year he was elected a Royal Academician, depositing a marble of Eve as his diploma work. He showed regularly at the Royal Academy between 1810 and 1862 and at the British Institution from 1812 to 1840. Through most of his career Baily lived in the area around Tottenham Court Road, London; his address was 8 Percy Street between 1824 and 1847 and 17 Newman Street from 1848 until 1855.
In 1815 he began work as a designer and modeller with the goldsmiths Rundell, Bridge and Rundell, where he seems to have been employed to make detailed drawings from outline designs by more famous artists such as Flaxman, Thomas Stothard and William Theed I. In 1833, shortly before the death of his employer, John Bridge, Baily moved to the firm of Hunt and Roskell, where he worked until 1857, designing a large number of works, including candelabra, presentation plate and racing trophies such as the Russian Imperial Ascot Trophy, 1846 (Al-Tajir Collection).
Several major patrons helped to establish his formidable reputation as a sculptor of ‘ideal’ works. Joseph Neeld, the great-nephew of Philip Rundell (of Rundell, Bridge and Rundell) commissioned statues from him over a period of forty years, including Adam and Eve (159) and The tired hunter (154) and displayed them in the vast central hall of his neo-Romanesque mansion, Grittleton House. Baily carved marble statues of the Pastoral Apollo (120) and Maternal love (130) for the 3rd Earl of Egremont’s gallery at Petworth and the merchant Elkanah Bicknell ordered statues of Paris, Psyche, Cupid and Paris, and showed them with his collection of British painting at his house in Herne Hill, which was visited by many art lovers (137-40).
The sculptor was involved in several major contracts in London during the 1820s, commissioned by the Royal Family and Office of Works. His most lucrative contract, valued at more than £6,000, was for statues and architectural ornaments intended for the Marble Arch (318-19), some of which appear to have been used on other buildings including, perhaps, the National Gallery (TNA WORK 19/3). There were difficulties, however, in extracting a final payment for the Arch and in 1831 he and Sir Richard Westmacott RA were obliged to remind the Treasury that a third and final payment was three years overdue (TNA WORK T. 1/3489 box 1, labelled 1833/back to 1829). Baily provided architectural ornaments and interior friezes for the throne room at Buckingham Palace (321), but another royal commission, for eight statues on the gateway at Hyde Park Corner, collapsed because of the King’s death in 1830.
Baily had a large practice in funerary monuments and these were admired and even celebrated in verse, though he was never as popular as his rival, Sir Francis Chantrey RA. Echoes of Flaxman’s designs are apparent in many, for instance the Denys memorial at Easton Neston, which features a group of three linear angels floating above the family tomb (62). As with most sculptors, his quality varied: Viscount Brome’s recumbent figure at Linton, Kent (63) was considered by Gunnis far to surpass Chantrey’s admired effigy of Lady Frederica Stanhope in the same county, but the monument to Sir William Ponsonby in St Paul’s Cathedral was condemned by him as ‘utter bathos’ (8).
His statues elicited a mixed response. Eve at the fountain, the figure which gave him a European reputation, was seen as ‘a marble inspiration softened into life’ (Builder, 1867, 387), but the figure of Lord Chief Justice Tindal (147), exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1847, aroused a venomous response in the Art Journal, which accused him of ‘patching up’ an old model of Sir William Blackstone by John Bacon RA. Baily’s portrait busts were not highly regarded, except for the image of Douglas Jerrold, a journalist and playwright well known in his day for his contributions to Punch (294), which was admired by the Builder for its interpretative power (1867, 387).
The sculptor’s enduring work is the statue of Horatio, Lord Nelson, in Trafalgar Square (135). In 1838 Baily was one of 150 artists competing for this prestigious commission and he suggested a figure of the Admiral standing on a rock at the foot of an obelisk, surrounded by a mythological group. This design came second to William Railton’s suggestion for a simple Corinthian column. A new competition was held the following year, and eventually the committee compromised by choosing Railton’s column supporting an ‘unadorned’ statue by Baily. Other major public works included statues of William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield (157) and Charles James Fox (158) for St Stephen’s Hall, at the Palace of Westminster.
Baily had a succession of notable pupils and studio assistants including Musgrave Lewthwaite Watson, William Theed II, William Calder Marshall RA, Joseph Durham, Edward Bowring Stevens and Alfred Gatley.
The sculptor must have been affluent at times during his career, but he seems to have been extravagant and may have had financial problems as early as 1833, when he wrote to the council of the Royal Academy, asking them to adopt measures to improve the distressed state of sculpture. In 1857 he was one of the sculptors submitting a design for the Duke of Wellington’s monument in St Paul’s Cathedral, but was unsuccessful, and he applied to the Royal Academy that year for financial assistance. Finally, in 1863, he was made an Honorary Retired Academician with a pension of £200. He did not exhibit again and died at Holloway, London, on 22 May 1867. His daughter Amelia was given a pension of £25, rising to £35, in the years 1867-71.
Though Baily’s achievement has been overshadowed both by Chantrey’s and Flaxman’s, his obituary in the Art Journal accorded him a distinctive place as one of the most successful sculptors of his century, an artist who upheld the dignity of his profession (AJ, 1867, 170). The many portraits of Baily suggest that he enjoyed celebrity thoroughout his mature career.
EH
Literary References: Smith 1931, passim; K-Browne 1966, 708-12; Oman 1966, 174-83; Gunnis 1968, 32-6; Physick 1969, 41-2, 181, 186; Radcliffe 1969, 44-51; Ormond 1973, 22-3; Penny 1975 (1), 314-32; Potterton 1975, 36; Penny 1977 (1), passim; Ormond and Rogers 2, 1979-81, 11; Read 1982, passim; Whinney 1988, passim; Kelly 1990, 221; Sporting Glory 1992, 62-3; Groseclose 1995, 74; Kader 1996, 177-82; Grove 1996, 3, 78-9 (Eustace); Bennett 1998, 130; Dawson 1999, 44-5, 96-9, 212; Curl 2001, 242; Jordan 2006, 19-35
Archival References: Baily/RA Council (re submission of Eve as diploma work, 31 Nov 1821; Baily / RA Council (2) (deploring effect on British sculptors of unfair competition from Italy, 15 Nov 1833); Baily /RA Council (3) (requesting financial assistance 6 Dec 1837, £30 paid); Baily/RA Council (4) (defending himself against allegations that he had worked on models by students in Antique school who were candidates for prizes, Nov 1843); RA/GA, 1867-71
Additional MS Sources: Baily Biog Coll; Baily Corresp; Baily/White; coll for a biography including some original correspondence, BL Add MSS 38678
Wills and Administrations: PPR, 21 June 1867, fol 393, letters of administration with will annexed, effects under £50
Miscellaneous Drawings: Album of designs for plate for Rundell, Bridge and Rundell, including some perhaps by Baily, VAM, E.70-124-1964; several sketches of winged figures, HMI Archive
Portraits of the Sculptor: J Dinham, bust, exhib RA, 1826, 1092; J Lonsdale, canvas, exhib RA, 1828, 91; Sir William Beechey, canvas, exhib RA, 1829, 301; Miss Turner, lithograph, BM, NPG; T Mogford, canvas, exhib RA, 1843,13, repr in Art Journal 1903, (Jordan 2006, 23 (repr); T Bridgford, drawing, exhib RA, 1843, 1059, engraved by J Smyth for the Art Union, 1847; drawing, Charles Hutton Lear, drawing, NPG, c1846, NPG 1456 (1); watercolour, artist unknown, c1850, NPG 6364 (Jordan 2006, 24 (repr); T Mogford, exhib RA 1854, 535; E G Papworth the younger, plaster statue, executed for Joseph Neeld, exhib RA, 1856, 1297; E G Papworth the younger, bust, exhib RA, 1856, 1331; G Tuson, canvas, exhib RA, 1858, 588; J E Williams, canvas, exhib RA, 1863, 693; self-portrait, canvas, nd, coll T C Bates; woodcut, published ILN, L (1867), 569; E G Papworth junior, bust, exhib RA 1868, 1127; A B Wyon, bronze medallion, nd, issued by the Art Union; photographs, NPG