Details of Sculptor

Surname

Paine

Alternative Surname

First Name

James

Initial of Surname

P

Year of Birth/Baptism

1745

Flourished

Year of Death

1829

Biographical Details

Paine was born in Pontefract in August 1745, the son of James Paine, the architect (l717-l789). Throughout his career he produced paintings, architectural drawings and sculpture, including one large-scale monument and a number of elegant designs for chimneypieces. His father trained Paine in the architectural profession, employing him as clerk of works at Thorndon Hall, Essex. His earliest exhibits at the Society of Artists were however watercolours of Yorkshire and Derbyshire landscapes. He became a student at St Martin’s Lane Academy by 1764, and, according to his own account, went to Paris in that year and to Rome for the first time in 1765 (Farington VI, 2117).
In January 1767 Paine was in Florence and a few months later he visited southern Italy. His sketchbook includes views of Tivoli, Capua, Naples and Vesuvius. His earliest datable work of sculpture was a model of Venus and Adonis (16) which, according to James Barry, ‘got him no small degree of credit’, on account of the ‘novelty, genius and agreeable manner with which he has treated it’ (Ingamells 1997, 731). Paine was clearly integrated into British society in Italy: Barry included a portrait of him in a self-portrait of 1767, and the influential diplomat and antiquarian, Sir William Hamilton, acquired Paine’s work (14). In 1767 Paine described himself as ‘sculptor’ in the first volume of his father’s Plans, Elevations and Sections. In 1769 he visited Venice before returning to London.
In London, Paine exhibited works at the Society of Artists (5-9, 15). Neither his bust of a lady nor his relief after the antique (7, 15), both exhibited in 1770, impressed Horace Walpole who described them as ‘very poor’ (Graves 1907, 187). Paine became a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries the following year. He exhibited ‘stained drawings’ of chimneypieces, several examples of which have been preserved. These make use of classical motifs, such as satyrs, paterae and strips of key pattern. Paine executed a parade room chimneypiece at Brocket Hall, which his father was then rebuilding (10). Sketches survive for chimneypieces for other clients, but it is not known if these were executed. They include one with grotesques for Lord Clifford of Ugbrook in Devon, another with floral decoration for Mr Kettle (possibly Tilly Kettle the painter, who was the husband of Paine’s half-sister), and a third for Loyd Baxendale, which makes use of a design from James Stuart’s Antiquities of Athens.
Paine’s most notable funerary monument, to the Covent Garden actor, William Powell, dates from 1771 (1). The work, which is almost 17 feet high and neoclassical in style, presents a figure of Fame holding a profile portrait-medallion. Sketches survive for several other monuments, all classical in style, and again it is not known whether these were executed. A design for a monument to Thomas Richardson features a cylindrical altar with ram’s head decoration and an urn. Another, intended to commemorate Thomas Hirst, has a relief of a seated boy releasing a butterfly and is inscribed ‘Mortality rendered Immortal, in its escape from the body’. The relief was used as part of another monument, to Lady Sondes, which has an architectural pediment with Vitruvian scrolls and Corinthian pilasters decorated with floral grotesques (2).
Paine married Elizabeth Crow, the daughter of a land surveyor who was an associate of his father, on 16 August 1773 at St Martin-in-the-Fields. Later that year the couple left England for the Continent, staying in Lyons in December and Turin the following January. They arrived in Rome in February with the painter Joseph Wright of Derby. A second sketch book is inscribed ‘I P St Rome 1774 Studies’ and contains more than 50 drawings of painted, sculptural and architectural subjects. Paine made extremely detailed measured drawings of the Venus de Medici, the Putti fighting with a swan, Dying Gaul and the Endymion in the Capitoline museum as well as pencil sketches of numerous other works of sculpture. His architectural drawings included elevations of the Baths of Diocletian and a ground plan of the Palazzo Farnese. Several of these are signed ‘J Paine Archt.’, reflecting Paine’s aspiration to be recognised as an architect. His son, John Thomas, was born in Rome.
By 1776 the couple were back in London, living in Upper Charlotte Street. They may have returned occasionally to Rome, for Gunnis records that Paine gave his address as ‘Rome’ until 1783 in various books to which he was a subscriber (Gunnis 1968, 286). He was certainly in Upper Charlotte Street in 1781 when he exhibited ‘An idea of a geometrical elevation for a national monument to the late Earl of Chatham’ at the Royal Academy (Graves VI, 1905-6, 42). Subsequent exhibited designs, which suggest that he was now determined on an architectural career, included a design for a prison and for a bridge across Lough Foyle at Derry, produced for the corporation of that city. Paine was also responsible for erecting a villa, Belmont, at Mill Hill, Middx, and he produced designs for building projects on the Marquess of Salisbury’s London estates. In 1791 he became a member of the Architects’ Club.
A good deal of incidental biographical information on Paine’s later life is available in the diaries of Joseph Farington, who was a close friend of Paine and a drawing instructor to Paine’s daughter. Farington, for instance, records Paine’s stint as a juror in a court case, and his involvement in the campaign to elect Sir Alan Gardner as an MP in June 1796, in competition with Charles James Fox and Horne Tooke. Farington also records details of Paine’s work. In Autumn 1797 he was working on the architecture of Stoke Park, where his costs were apparently high: Farington records that Paine’s bill for flooring in one suite of rooms was £600, and that Paine too often seemed ‘to leave workmen idle’ (Farington, 3, 890-1). Farington also notes that he, Paine and Nathaniel Marchant dined at Stoke Park in August, when John Penn, the owner, proposed that a monument should be raised to the poet Thomas Gray, who was buried at nearby Stoke Poges. Farington records that Paine produced a design based on Nero’s tomb, which was rejected, but later presented another design with an estimate of £450. Farington does not record whether the project materialised.
Paine was living at North End, near Hammersmith in 1788. By 1804 he had moved to Turnham Green, west London, where he and his wife played host to Farington many times, and served home-made blackcurrant wine to their guests. Farington writes that Paine had dealings with the Proby family in 1804, and it may be that his last known monument dates from around this time (3). In 1809 he moved with his family to an estate at Sunninghill, Berks, and held a sale of part of his collection of paintings at Christie’s. Various illnesses forced the family to stay in Brighton in 1810, although the air could not prevent the death of Paine’s daughter in May 1813 and his wife the following year. Paine himself underwent an emergency operation to remove a carbuncle from his neck in 1813, which required four incisions. He was directed to live well and drink a pint of port a day, which must have proved good advice for he survived another 16 years before passing away in May 1829. He left three surviving daughters, Elizabeth, Barbara and Mary.
In his will, proved in July, Paine requested to be buried under a slab carved with his monogram ‘IP’, in the family vault at Marylebone Church. He left freehold and leasehold lands in Berkshire, Yorkshire, Surrey, and Middlesex, as well as houses in Great Newport Street, Westminster and Castle Street, Leicester Square. In addition to other household items he also had an impressive art collection, including family portraits by Tilly Kettle, George Romney and a picture of himself and his father by Sir Joshua Reynolds, ‘a painting of extraordinary merit’, which was bequeathed to the Ashmolean Museum. Paine’s daughter Mary inherited a portfolio of Paine’s prints, drawings, memoranda and sketch-books as well as his ‘sculptured marbles, models, Terra cottas and casts’. She also received rings, intaglios and casts from antique gems ‘which I purchased whilst a student at Rome, together with all my implements for drawing, modelling and painting’ (PROB 11/1758).
The remainder of his collection was sold at Christie’s on 12 March 1830. The sale included a book of Paine’s chimneypiece designs and several Italian, French and English books on architecture. There were also numerous casts after the antique, a terracotta model by Thomas Banks, and paintings by Murillo, Van Goyen, Stothard, Wilson, Farington, Romney, Reynolds and Stubbs. Among the lots were the account-books of the sculptor, Nicholas Stone, which had originally belonged to George Vertue and are now in Sir John Soane’s Museum.
MGS
Literary References: Farington, passim; Graves VI, 1905-6, 42; Gunnis 1968, 286; Stainton 1983, 15, 30; Laing 1983, 186-188; Colvin 1995, 727; Ingamells 1997, 731
Archival References: IGI
Collections of Drawings: Studies made in Rome, 1774, VAM 93 E.26 3859 (1-57); designs for chimney-pieces VAM D.1540-7-1907
Miscellaneous Drawings: Monument to Thomas Richardson VAM D 1550-1907, pen and coloured wash, signed; monument to Thomas Hirst VAM D 1549-1907, signed; monument to unidentified subject, VAM D 1549-1907, pen and coloured wash of a relief of a standing child with caduceus; design for a stone bridge across Lough Foyle, 1793, tinted drawing, framed, VAM D213-1890 (sold with his elevation of a prison in India ink in 1830, lot 83, 14s); design for a memorial to Admiral Lord Nelson, proposed for St Paul's Cathedral, VAM 8520-10, pen and wash, signed ‘J. Paine Archt’(Physick 1969, 164, repr)
Portraits of the Sculptor: James Barry, self-portrait with Dominique Lefevre and James Paine the Younger, oil on canvas, 1767, NPG 213; Sir Joshua Reynolds, Portrait of James Paine the Elder and James Paine the Younger, 1764, Ashmolean; Romney James Paine, half-length portrait, mentioned in Paine’s will, untraced
Auction Catalogues: Paine Sale 1830