Details of Sculptor

Surname

Hickey

Alternative Surname

First Name

John

Initial of Surname

H

Year of Birth/Baptism

1751

Flourished

Year of Death

1795

Biographical Details

Hickey was born in Dublin, the fourth son of Noah Hickey, a confectioner in Capel Street, and the brother of the painter, Thomas Hickey. He entered the Royal Dublin Society Schools in 1764, where he gained several prizes before he left to become a pupil of Richard Cranfield. Hickey may have worked for a cabinetmaker for he exhibited a group of dead game intended for a girandole in 1768 at the Society of Artists in William Street (35).
In 1772 he went to England, where on 20 January he joined the Royal Academy Schools, giving his date of birth as 7 November 1751 (not 1756, as stated in Strickland). In 1777 he exhibited a tablet for a chimneypiece at the Royal Academy from 34 Gerrard Street, Soho (26), and in 1778 won the Academy’s gold medal for his relief of The slaughter of the innocents (33).
Hickey was living at Union Street, New Palace Yard in 1780 and was working on church monuments: that year and in 1781 he exhibited models for monuments at the Royal Academy (4, 5). The Elizabeth Hawkins, 1782, which Gunnis considered his finest, is a sophisticated wall monument with four stern neoclassical busts, a weeping cherub and a full-sized personification of Faith, leaning against a portrait medallion of the deceased (6). It incorporates a wealth of decorative detail, including an ornate rococo sarcophagus and branches and is carved in polychrome marbles.
In 1782 it was proposed to erect a monument in Dublin to the politician, Henry Grattan, and Hickey applied for the commission. He was supported by Edmund Burke, who wrote from Whitehall to Lord Charlemont: ‘it will be a pleasure to you to know that at this time a young man of Ireland is here, who I really think, as far as my judgment goes, is fully equal to our best statuaries both in taste and execution. If you employ him, you will encourage the rising arts in the decoration of the rising virtue of Ireland.... The young man’s name who wishes to be employed is Hickey’ (HMC 1891, 1, 61). Though the project fell through and the monument was never erected, Burke continued to do all in his power for his fellow-countryman. He sat to Hickey for two portrait-busts (19, 22). One, with rounded drapery, was bought by Lord Fitzwilliam and engraved by William Ward. The other, in stern herm form, is in the British Museum.
Another of Hickey’s patrons was Lord Loughborough, whose bust was carved in 1785 (20). Loughborough, too, seems to have been anxious to help Hickey, for in the same year he recommended the sculptor to Lord Berwick as a carver of chimney-pieces, adding in his letter that he had ‘employed Hickey on work of that nature with complete satisfaction’. Here again Hickey was unfortunate, for Lord Berwick replied that he had already engaged another artist (Berwick Archives). Hickey did, however, execute a number of other chimneypieces, one at least under Sir John Soane (30).
In 1785 or 1786 he moved from Poland Street to lodgings at 128 Oxford Street. In 1786 he was appointed Sculptor to the Prince of Wales, and two years later he provided a figure for a Carlton House clock designed by Justin Vulliamy (37). Two important commissions for Irish monuments came around this time: in 1787 Freeman’s Journal reported the impending arrival of a monument to the Chief Justice of Ireland, Henry Singleton, at Drogheda (12), and the completion of the monument to David Latouche, a member of the Huguenot banking family (15). The former has a portrait bust and a large relief representing Justice, whilst the latter is an ambitious work with a standing figure of Latouche above a sarcophagus, at the foot of which are mourning figures of his three sons, David, John and Peter. The work is dramatically top-lit. Freeman’s Journal said of the two monuments that ‘Fame speaks loudly of both, but the latter more especially’ and congratulated Ireland for employing one of her sons to perpetuate the memory of its deceased (July 31-August 2, quoted in Potterton 1975, 49). These successes failed to bring Hickey recognition among his fellow artists in London and in November 1794 he stood unsuccessfully for election as an Associate Royal Academician.
Strickland writes that Hickey was chosen by Irish Roman Catholics in 1794 to execute a statue of King George III for Dublin. He went over to the city to receive instruction from the committee but the project appears to have aborted. At this time Hickey also received one of the most notable commissions of the day, the monument to David Garrick for Westminster Abbey. The work was commissioned by Albany Wallis, a friend of Garrick, who chose Hickey on the recommendation of Edmund Burke. Burke described Hickey as ‘one well qualified’ who ‘would do it on reasonable terms’ (Farington II, 292), and the commission was thought to be worth £600.
Hickey was not able to execute the commission for he died on 13 January 1795 at his lodgings in Oxford Street. Burke wrote to Albany Wallis two days later that ‘Death is in close pursuit of us … if poor Hickey had been spared to us, I should not have preferred any sculptor living to him [for the Garrick monument]’ (quoted in Strickland 1, 1913, 482). Burke felt the only proper replacement for the commission was Thomas Banks, although J C F Rossi was also keen to take on the work. In the event it went to Henry Webber, who was a close associate of the deceased sculptor, and attended his funeral, held on 19 January. At the service an ‘Ode on a young sculptor’ penned by the architect William Porden was sung. The Hibernian Magazine commented that year that Hickey’s death ‘is a public loss, as he was an ingenious, deserving young man and an excellent artist’ (quoted in Potterton 1975, 49).
Farington noted that Hickey died ‘after an illness of 3-4 days only owing to having lain in a damp bed’ (II, 292), though the satirist Pasquin commented that Hickey died because ‘intemperance abolished his powers and eclipsed his glory’ (quoted in Potterton 1975, 49). He certainly died in debt. His will, dictated in a state of ‘weakness and suffering’ only a day before his death, asked that bequests should be made from the profits of a masque which he had written and sent to the managers of Covent Garden. Henry Webber and Thomas Hickey were appointed as executors, though Webber asked to be excused the responsibility. In the event Hickey’s estate was insufficiently extensive to pay off the sculptor’s debts, whilst the masque was rejected by the Covent Garden managers as ‘not fit for representation’.
MGS
Literary References: Farington, I, 220, 225, 249; II, 292, 294; Graves IV, 1905-6, 93; Strickland 1, 1913, 480-2; Hutchison 1960-62, 137; Crookshank 1966, 306, 308; Gunnis 1968, 199-200; Potterton 1975, 49; Whinney 1988, 316
Archival References: GPC
Will: PROB 11/1272/218-9