Details of Sculptor

Surname

Read

Alternative Surname

First Name

Nicholas

Initial of Surname

R

Year of Birth/Baptism

?1730

Flourished

Year of Death

1787

Biographical Details

A student and the self-appointed successor to Louis François Roubiliac, Read’s monuments are characterised by drama and excess. He was probably the son of James and Anne Read, born 1 April 1730 and christened at St Martin-in-the-Fields ten days later. He was the eldest of three or more children. Read was first a student at the St Martin’s Lane Academy and around 1746 he was apprenticed by his father to Roubiliac. A later account in the Gentleman’s Magazine claims that Read became a favourite student of the French sculptor after covertly and successfully completing one of his master’s busts. ‘From that moment they continued inseparable friends ever after and all distinction was lost in the affection [Roubiliac] bore him’ (GM, 1787, vol 57, pt II, 644).
George Vertue, who saw a drawing by Read of an ‘academy figure’ in 1750, recorded that it showed ‘great skill & fire & spirit extraordinary’ (Vertue, III, 152). Read is said to have worked on many of Roubiliac’s major commissions, including the famous skeletal figure of Death on the monument to Mrs Nightingale, and he was left in charge of the business whilst his master was in Rome in 1752. When Roubiliac died, early in 1762, Read took over the workshop, advertising within a few days that, having been with Roubiliac for the last 16 years ‘and executed great part of his most capital works’ he now meant to succeed him (Anecdotes 1937, 151). It seems likely that Read completed some of Roubiliac’s unfinished commissions, particularly the monument to Francis Hooper, which incorporates a bust by Roubiliac (2), and another to Lucretia Betenson at Wrotham, Kent (1). He repeated the Betenson emblem of a cut rose on the monument to John Kendall (3).
In March 1762 Read published an advertisement offering casts of several busts by Roubiliac including representations of Alexander Pope, Isaac Ware and David Garrick. These were to be had ‘considerably cheaper than their usual price’ since the contents of Roubiliac’s studio were to be sold in May (Anecdotes 1937, 151-2). By this date Read was evidently an accomplished marble sculptor for on 27 April 1762 he won a premium of 100 guineas from the Society of Arts for his life-size figure of Actaeon (19). He married Mary Simmonds at about this time, and their child, Thomas James, was christened in December 1763. On 27 April 1764 he won another prize of 140 guineas from the Society of Arts for a figure of Diana out of water by a rock (20). These were the largest premiums for sculpture ever offered by the Society, and his achievement won him notices in the Press.
An anecdote by J T Smith relates that Read had once declared that when he finished his apprenticeship to Roubiliac ‘he would show the world what a monument ought to be’ (Smith 1828, vol 2, 240-1). His early independent works indicate that he aimed to make an impression with his innovative designs and powerful dramatic effects. His monument to Nicholas Magens, 1766, which was described in the Ipswich Journal that November (5), is an overpowering assembly of motifs. A statue of Fame with inappropriately large outstretched wings stands with a globe and cherub, in front of a Breccia marble pyramid. They are surrounded by emblems of trade, bales of merchandise, an anchor, rope and a bursting cornucopia, which pours forth a flood of fruits of the earth intermixed with golden guineas. The pyramid is encrusted with ice-cream clouds and numbers of twisting putti who threaten to overwhelm the figures below.
Soon after completing the Magens monument Read won the commission for Admiral Tyrrell’s monument in Westminster Abbey (6), a Resurrection scene. This was partly dismantled in the 19th century when the figure of the Admiral was put into store, which is regrettable, for the work has received ridicule and high praise in equal measure. Its swelling clouds earned it the sobriquet ‘the pancake monument,’ and J T Smith considered it the vilest work in the Abbey. On the other hand, Mrs Esdaile later described the remaining figures as ‘very beautiful’ and the relief of Tyrrell’s ship, the Buckingham, as ‘technically among the most amazing things in English art’ (Esdaile 1928, 214).
Although few in number, Read’s monuments are ambitious and varied. The Northumberland memorial, designed by Robert Adam, is built around the family vault in Westminster Abbey (14) and consciously echoes the Elizabethan and Jacobean surroundings, despite the obvious neoclassicism. Read departed from Adam's design in several particulars, most notably the incorporation of a delightful naturalistic relief of the Duchess as Charity giving alms. The monument to Mrs Simons is an asymmetrical variant on a standard type, the portrait-medallion on a draped pyramid (10). The Finch monument incorporates two unusual urns (7) and Lady Margan’s memorial, an x–shaped composition, has a figure of Fame with her head falling backwards in an ecstasy of grief (8).
In 1779 Read submitted an unsuccessful design for the monument to Lord Chatham, presenting Chatham standing on a sarcophagus in an oratorial pose, surrounded by figures of Learning, Eloquence and History (12). Like his friend John Cheere, who left him a small bequest to buy a mourning ring, Read appears to have had a high public profile, but he won little recognition amongst artists. He appears not to have sought any connection with the Royal Academy, unlike his co-apprentice in Roubiliac’s studio, William Tyler RA, and he exhibited on only a couple of occasions at the Free Society.
The paucity of Read’s known work supports Smith’s claim that the mainstay of his business was not sculpture but property development. According to Smith, who clearly disliked Read intensely, the sculptor was able to increase his means tenfold by ‘the trade of purchasing old houses, fitting them up, and then letting them at an immense increase of rent’ (Smith 1828, vol 2, 240-1).
He died on 11 July 1787 at his house at 65, St Martin’s Lane. His obituary noted ‘his faculties were, from his great studies, impaired at a time of life when other men’s are in their prime, and he became totally deprived of reason a short time before his death’ (GM, 1787, vol 57, pt 2, 644-5). His will, proved that month, left all his ‘real and personal estates’ to his wife Mary, and an annuity of £100 per annum to his son, Thomas James. Further annuities went to three other family members. A sale of his stocks of marble and clay, his casts, tools and utensils was held at his workshop by William Booth on 2 August.
The Gentleman’s Magazine claimed that Read ‘received the highest wages given to any of his profession’ (GM, 1787, vol 57, pt 2, 644-5). His contemporary success has not been matched by his posthumous reputation. Smith, whose father Nathaniel Smith also served his apprenticeship in Roubiliac’s workshop, regarded Read’s frequent self-promotion as the heir to Roubiliac as immodest and presumptuous. Other accounts, not coloured by personal antipathy, treat Read’s sculptural bombast as an anticlimactic appendage to Roubiliac’s career and a final and outdated flourish of the baroque tradition. The Gentleman’s Magazine commented in 1818 that Read ‘displayed more of concetto than his master, without his judgement or taste’ (GM, vol 88, I, 597).
MGS

Literary References: Press Cuttings 1723-1800, fols 30, 40; Mortimer 1763, 24; GM, vol 57, pt 2, 644-5; Smith 1828, II, 240-1; Esdaile 1928, 213-4; Anecdotes 1937, 151-3; Gunnis 1968, 315-6; Penny 1977 (1), passim; Whinney 1988, 272-3, 400, 456 n49, 461 n44 and 46; Bindman and Baker 1995, passim; ODNB (Baker); Aymonino 2010, 288-296; Craske 2014
Archival References: IGI
Wills: John Cheere, 1787, FRC PROB 11/1155/104r; Louis-François Roubiliac 1762, FRC PROB 11/872/213r-4; Nicholas Read, FRC PROB 11/1155/294-5, proved 12 July 1787
Auction Catalogues: Read 1787