Details of Sculptor

Surname

Palmer

Alternative Surname

First Name

Benjamin

Initial of Surname

P

Year of Birth/Baptism

Flourished

c1712-78

Year of Death

Biographical Details

After the death of his father, William Palmer, in 1739, he took over the yard in Bedford Row near Gray’s Inn. Shortly before his death William had supplied Henry Purefoy of Shalstone, Bucks, with a purple marble mantelpiece and chimney slab, together with a black slab for another chimneypice. Purefoy wrote a series of letters to William and then to Benjamin Palmer expressing his disatisfaction with various aspects of this work, particularly the purple marble slab, which he thought ‘must be Counterfeit, for everywhere where it looks like mother of pearl it blisters & rises up, & where it is trod upon it breaks of[f] in a thin shell & underneath is a course stone like freestone’ (Eland 1931, vol I, 58). After Benjamin sent a replacement slab to Shalstone in April 1841, Purefoy wrote to complain that the new one would probably peel too, that it had small cracks which might expand and that it was ‘not near so good marble as the mantle piece itself’ (ibid, 59). Purefoy’s letters ceased after the new slab was laid so it seems that his fears were groundless.
Palmer’s most ambitious work is the statue of Sir William Harpur over the old Grammar School at Bedford (23). He also provided the Harpur monument (18) which has medallion portraits and was paid £200 for both works in 1768 (Bedford School MS, account book, in Gunnis 1968, 287). Gunnis comments that ‘as a statuary Palmer is not as good as his father, and his monuments, though large, are not particularly distinguished’. Those to Arthur O’Keefe and Sir Thomas Gage feature portrait busts (15, 6). Palmer retired in 1778, and a sale of his stock was held on 7 and 8 July that year.
Literary References: Eland 1931, vol I, pp 53-4, 58-60; Gunnis 1968, 287
Archival References: Harpur charity documents, Bedford School, fol 4c (bill for Harpur’s monument and statue); fol 5a, (Palmer's bill for the above); fol 5b (letter from Palmer to the master, governors and trustees of the Bedford Charity, complaining about lack of payment
Auction Catalogue: Palmer 1778