Details of Sculptor

Surname

Paty

Alternative Surname

First Name

Thomas, of Bristol

Initial of Surname

P

Year of Birth/Baptism

1712/13

Flourished

Year of Death

1789

Biographical Details

Thomas Paty is best known as an architect, but he also had a thriving practice as a monumental mason, was an accomplished carver in stone and wood. He worked with his brother, James Paty II, on a number of urban developments in Bristol. Nothing is known of his background and training, or of his wife, who probably pre-deceased him, for she is not mentioned in his will. There were three children, John Paty II, William Paty and Elizabeth, who married Thomas King of Bath. From 1777 onwards he worked in association with his sons, who returned from London after studying at the Royal Academy, John as a sculptor from 1772 and William as an architect. After their induction, the firm was known as Thomas Paty and Sons. The workshop and family home were in Limekiln Lane.
Paty was the only male member of the immediate family who did not become a freeman of Bristol. This clearly placed him at no disadvantage since the corporation consulted him regularly as an architect and employed him as a stone carver and mason. In 1741-2 he worked under the architect, John Wood the Elder, carving architectural ornaments on the Bristol Exchange (50), and at the same period he was employed at Redland Court, providing all the wood and stone carving in the chapel. A contemporary note on the chapel observes that Paty ‘is generally esteemed one of the best Carvers in England, either in Wood or Stone’, and that ‘all the Ornaments in the Chapel were designed and carved’ by him (Redland Chapel, Church Book, 18 October 1755, fol 29v). He was responsible for the dressed masonry and carving at Clifton Hill House, designed by Isaac Ware in 1746 (55), and at the Royal Fort House, designed by James Bridges, c1758-60, where Paty worked on interior schemes with the plasterer, Thomas Stocking, his next door neighbour and a regular member of his team. Paty was the superintending architect for the Theatre Royal, Bristol between 1764-66, a building inspired by Sir Christopher Wren’s theatre in Drury Lane, London. This commission consisted largely of structural carpentry with appropriate embellishments (54). He was also the mason and carver at St George’s, Kingswood, near Bristol, between 1752 and 1756 (51). In 1768 Henry Hoare engaged him to dismantle the famous Bristol Cross and to move it to Stourhead.
Most of Paty’s wall monuments subscribe to late-18th century taste with their elegantly carved urns, floral swags, mourning women, reeded decoration and classical devices. The exception is the ambitious, but graceful monument to William Hilliard, executed around 1750 (11). This edifice is nearly 20 feet in height and is structured in three stages. The base is a rusticated archway leading into the vault. Above that is a small gadrooned sarcophagus flanked by putti, on which is set an imposing portrait bust, framed by a triangular pediment on consoles. The upper zone has a pyramid supporting an armorial shield.
A letter dated 24 April 1787 gives insights into Paty’s marketing practice. A potential client, Charles Morgan, enquired about a tablet for a kinswoman, Mrs Parry of Herefordshire. Paty sent him two roughly similar designs for decorative urns, set on an oval ground of coloured marbles. He readily admitted that the simpler of the two, which he priced at £12, had already been used for another monument (42). The variant design ‘will be £18 to £22 according to the relief given to the work but if the urn and part under it should be thought too plain it may be ornamented so as to make the monument look much better, which may be done from thirty shillings to five guineas’ (Glamorgan Archive Service, Cardiff (D/D Xgc 54). The embellishments and price were variable, as the letter explained.
Between 1775 and 1779, when his brother died, Thomas and John Paty II worked on the development of a number of new streets in Bristol. Their workshops remained separate throughout. They played a major role in the development of the Georgian city, where their repetitive designs satisfied a market for quiet, conservative elegance. The Patys laid out Clare, High, Bridge, Union and Bath Streets. Between 1763 and 1769 Thomas rebuilt Bristol Bridge and the adjoining church of St Nicholas, where he designed and executed a gothic tower and a spire for the church.
Paty’s assistants included James Allen of Bristol, who was apprenticed to him in 1752 and Michael Sidnell, who assisted him at the Redland chapel. His sons John and William no doubt received some training with him before joining the Academy schools.
He appears to have died in reasonably comfortable circumstances: his will, dated 2 May 1789, a couple of days before his death, specified that his daughter, Elizabeth, should received £800 and her husband, Thomas King, £250. John Paty was to receive a sum equivalent to the value of a house that Paty had already given to his other son, William. The sons continued the business from Limekiln Lane for a short time before John’s premature death on 10 June 1789.
Paty appears to have been responsible for many of the designs in the Paty Copybook, though positive identification is impossible since they are unsigned and his technique is similar to his son, William’s. They include 15 with funerary urns (nos 5, 9, 10, 22, 26, 29, 30, 42, 43, 44, 46, 48, 49, 60, 71), one with a putto leaning on an urn (no 87) and one with an heraldic shield (no 102). There is a proposal for the principal front of the Merchant Venturers’ Hall (no 125) and a design for a chimneypiece in the gothic taste, inscribed ‘Statuary; £40.0’ (no 133). Several other attributed designs for monuments appear in Henry Wood’s Monumental Masonry.
Paty’s brief obituary in the European Magazine for May 1789 described him as an ‘Architect and Statuary [of] Bristol’ and the Bristol Journal called him an architect ‘whose extensive virtues, professional abilities and strict integrity, will in this city ever be rever’d’ (BJ, 9 May 1789). His great achievement as a carver is the interior of the Redland Chapel.
In addition to the monuments listed below there are modest memorials by Paty in a number of churches in the Bristol area.
IR
Literary References: Euro Mag, May 1789, 424; Gunnis 1964, 294-5; Nason 1983, 886-888; Beard 1981, 274; Whinney 1988, 256; Dale-Jones and Lloyd 1989, 56; Lloyd 1989, 44; Colvin 1995, 742-3; Priest 2003, passim
Archival References: Paty/Morgan, 1787 (quoted in Lloyd 1989, 44); Paty Copybook
Additional MS Sources: St George, Kingswood, Book of Commissioners, 1751-64; St George, Kingswood, Chamberlain's cash accounts, 1752-64
Collections of Drawings: Paty Copybook; Wood’s Monumental Masonry, nos 153, 226, 227, 230, 234, 235 (some perhaps by William Paty)