Details of Sculptor

Surname

Bevan

Alternative Surname

First Name

Silvanus

Initial of Surname

B

Year of Birth/Baptism

1691

Flourished

Year of Death

1765

Biographical Details

An apothecary and ivory carver, he was the son of Silvanus Bevan and Jane (née Phillips), both of Swansea. After moving to London he traded as an apothecary in Cheapside and from 1715 at 2 Plough Court, Lombard Street. On 10 September 1715 he married Elizabeth, the daughter of Daniel Quare, clockmaker to Queen Anne, at the Meeting House in White Hart Court, Gracechurch Street. The ceremony was attended by several eminent Quakers including William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania, and persons of rank such as Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough. In 1736 Bevan was joined in partnership by his younger brother, Timothy, who inherited the business when Silvanus died without issue in 1765.
Thirty busts and reliefs carved by Bevan remained in the possession of the family until 1880, when the collection was dispersed, and only a handful of his works is known today. The most significant of these is the profile portrait of William Penn, thought to be the only reliable portrait of him in existence (1). Penn’s presence at Bevan’s wedding indicates that they knew each other well, so it is possible that it was carved from the life around 1715. However, in a letter to Lord Kames, dated 3 January 1760, Benjamin Franklin related an anecdote that Bevan ‘an old Quaker apothecary, remarkable for the notice he takes of countenances, and a knack he has of cutting in ivory strong likenesses of persons he has once seen’ carved the bust from memory some years after Penn’s death for Lord Cobham who was then setting up the statues of famous men in the gardens at Stowe and could find no likeness of Penn. Josiah Wedgwood is thought to have used Bevan’s carvings of Penn, Dr Mead, Dr Pemberton, Sir Hans Sloane and Sir Isaac Newton as models for jasperware medallions produced during the last quarter of the eighteenth century (2, 3, 6, 7).
Literary References: Tait 1959, 126-32; Dawson 1999, 142, 156