Details of Sculptor

Surname

Plura

Alternative Surname

First Name

Joseph II

Initial of Surname

P

Year of Birth/Baptism

1753

Flourished

Year of Death

Biographical Details

The son of Joseph Plura I, he returned with his family from London to Bath after his father’s death in 1756. He entered the Royal Academy Schools in 1773 and he may have worked in the studio of Joseph Nollekens for J T Smith mentions that a ‘Plara’ was ‘among his best workmen’ (Smith 1920, I, 97). He cannot have remained there long for in 1777 he went to Rome to continue his studies. In the autumn of 1778 he visted Naples with Thomas Jones and in the following September Lord Herbert included him in a list of artists in the city, giving his address as Strada Croce. In his diary for 24 September 1779 Lord Herbert mentions that he went with John Coxe Hippisley ‘to see his Bust not yet finished, by a young English Artist, viz: Plura, but could not see it to advantage as he was then placing the cast upon it’ (ibid) (1). In September 1780 he was in Florence, copying in the Uffizi and he was twice in Venice, on 11 February and 16 May 1781. Plura was back in London in 1782, when he exhibited two wax portraits and a bust at the RA, from an address in Broad Street, Soho (5, 6, 2). Four years later he sent a ‘busto of the Abbé Grant at Rome’ to the Academy, giving his address as ‘At Mr. Dufour’s, Litle Titchfield Street’ (3).
Literary References: Fleming 1956, 181; Gunnis 1968, 309; Pyke 1973, 112; Ingamells 1997, 777-8