Details of Sculptor

Surname

Heffernan

Alternative Surname

First Name

James

Initial of Surname

H

Year of Birth/Baptism

1788

Flourished

Year of Death

1847

Biographical Details

He was born in Londonderry, the son of John Heffernan. His father worked for the Cork architect Michael Shanahan and is known to have been employed as a plasterer in 1791 at Downhill, the home of Frederick, Earl of Bristol and Bishop of Derry. After his father’s death, Heffernan was apprenticed to Shanahan at the instigation of the Earl-Bishop. He was taken to Cork, where Shanahan owned a marble works and was employed in carving chimneypieces and tombstones.
Strickland writes that Heffernan left Ireland for London at the age of 22, and after brief spells working in the studios of J C F Rossi and Sir Francis Chantrey, he joined the Royal Academy schools to study sculpture. His name is recorded in the entry books in February 1811. He won silver medals in 1815 and 1817 (5, 6) and was beaten to the gold, first by Samuel Joseph and then by William Scoular. In 1816 he exhibited for the first time at the Royal Academy, giving his address as 27 St George’s Row, Chelsea Bridge (25). He completed his education with a visit to Rome.
After returning to England he was again employed by Chantrey, but also continued to exhibit in his own right at the Royal Academy, where he showed a series of ideal works of subjects from Ovid (26, 31, 33), Homer (28) and Thomson (30). In 1823 he carved the monument to the Bishop of Cloyne, the ‘chief promoter of Christianity among the American Indians’ (Graves IV, 1905-6, 62). It presents a kneeling figure with curious braided hair and a loincloth, praying over a Bible in front of a palm-tree. Though the iconography is conventional, the monument is carved with considerable ability (2). Heffernan’s talent was soon noted in the press. In 1825 a review of the Academy exhibition praised his bust of Miss Hill of Norfolk (12) and his Susannah at the bath (32) as works ‘full of promise’. The critic suggested that this ‘young and rising artist of considerable genius’ was ‘standing fair for the highest rank of his profession’ (anon press report quoted at length in Strickland 1, 1913, 469-70).
Heffernan moved to 1 Ranelagh Grove, Islington in 1827. In 1830 he was at 5 Belgrave Place and in 1832 at 35 Coleshill Street. He does not seem to have established his own practice and when he exhibited the model of a Girl caressing a child at the Royal Academy in 1831 (36), a journal of the arts expressed irritation that Heffernan did not produce his own works in marble: ‘Why is it that we never, or so rarely, see the productions of this gentleman’s chisel.. seeing that working in the marble is understood to be his peculiar province?’ They feared that he was ‘wasting the summer of his life, like so many other talented men in this town, to increase the already overgrown reputation of another’ (Library of Fine Arts 1831, vol 1, 432).
Strickland writes that Chantrey actively dissuaded Heffernan from pursuing an independent career, in part by making the vain promise of a bequest in his will. Heffernan remained in Chantrey’s studio until the death of the latter in 1841 and became indispensable to the business. The Gentleman’s Magazine recorded that he carved ‘almost every one of Chantrey's busts literally from the first to the last’ (GM 1842, part I, 103) and Peter Cunningham credited Heffernan with breathing life into the finished works. He was a ‘consummate master in transferring a look from dull, dead clay to semi-transparent Carrara marble; he saw and caught and translated Chantrey into another material’ (Builder, 1863, 112). After Chantrey’s death Heffernan completed many of his master’s works and also carved a memorial with a portrait relief in his memory (4).
Heffernan’s health failed soon after Chantrey’s death and he retired to Cork where he took a cottage on the banks of the Lee. He died there of dysentery on 21 October 1847. Little is known of his family, though his wife was described by Peter Cunningham as ‘dear old Mrs Heffernan’. Cunningham also left a thumbnail character sketch of the sculptor: he remembered Heffernan as a jovial character with a ‘Cove of Cork’ laugh, who combined merriment in the studio with considerable skill and certainty of touch (Builder, 1863, 112). Strickland’s more sober tribute was to a man of good humour, who had industry, talent and a love of art, but whose advancement in life was ‘marred by diffidence, a want of reliance upon himself, and broken health’ (Strickland 1, 1913, 470).
MGS
Literary References: Graves 1875, 257; Graves IV, 1905-6, 62; Strickland 1, 1913, 468-471; Hutchison 1960-2, 166; Gunnis 1968, 195-6; Potterton 1975, 47-48; AAI 2014 [Sullivan]
Will: Sir Francis Chantrey PROB 11/1954/343-347