Details of Sculptor

Surname

Richards

Alternative Surname

First Name

James

Initial of Surname

R

Year of Birth/Baptism

1671

Flourished

Year of Death

1759

Biographical Details

He was Carver to the King in wood, marble and stone. On 20 December 1721 he was appointed successor to Grinling Gibbons as master sculptor and master carver in wood to the crown, at a fee of 18 pence per day, plus all the ‘Profits Rights Allowances Liberties Commodities and Advantages’ enjoyed by his predecessor. He also received ‘One Robe yearly’ which was to be taken ‘out of Our Great Wardrobe against the Feast of the Birth of Our Lord Jesus Christ by the hands of the Master Keeper or other Officer of Our said Wardrobe’ (Account Book of Richard Arundel, quoted in Gunnis 1968, 319). On 20 May 1724 he was also appointed surveyor and repairer of carved wood to the crown. Richards kept both posts until his death.
By his own testimony he was made a freeman of the City of London as a mason before 1723, and he is recorded as a carver at several houses working under Colen Campbell (7, 14, 19) and William Kent (1, 6, 15, 16, 28, 31). He was responsible for much of the consummate carving on the royal barge in 1730-31, working to Kent’s designs (23). Beard describes Richards as ‘one of the most accomplished carvers of the Palladian years’ (Beard 1985, 690).
Richards married a Miss Mary Morse (†1760). Their only son died 13 January 1739, aged 36. One daughter, Elizabeth, married the architect Isaac Ware at St James, Paddington, on 22 September 1729 and another, Mary, married the glazier Charles Carne. Richards was one of the subscribers to Ware’s edition of Palladio’s Quattro Libri published in 1738. Richards lent Ware and Carne £1,500, perhaps as an investment in their building projects, a sum that had still not been repaid at the time of his death. In 1739 Ware and Carne mortgaged their lease of 429 Strand to Richards as security for the loan.
Richards’s employees included Ralph Kite, who was recorded as his ‘man’ at Houghton in 1729 and also his grandson Walter James Ware. Richards petitioned the Board of Works to employ him and Ware to carry out carved work for the Horse Guards building in August 1750 (16). He left £200 to Ware in his will (later reduced to £100) to discharge his debts, and £1,000 in securities.
In 1744 Richards became a director of the Westminster Fire Office. By 1754 he was ill and the Board of Works declared that he was ‘by age and infirmity render’d incapable of performing the Duty of his Office.’ They recommended that George Murray ‘who hath been employed as his Assistant, be ... continued in that Employment’ (TNA Work 6/17, 128 quoted in Colvin 1973-76, vol V, 473). Murray seems to have been a long-term assistant: he had worked with Richards at 17 Arlington Street in 1742 (31) and provided carved work at the Horse Guards in 1750-1 (16). He succeeded to the office of master carver on Richards’s death.
Richards died on 21 December 1759, and was buried at Sandon, Essex. In his will, proved in January 1760, he left nearly £2,800 in named gifts, which he estimated as half his estate; the money owed to him by Carne and Ware was to be counted as part of the portion left to his daughter, Mary Carne. A freehold estate near ‘Westram’, Kent was left to his granddaughter Margaret Millington, and his freehold estate, Woodhill ‘or what other name it be called’ passed to his daughter Mary Carne in a codicil. In another codicil the value of several of the gifts was slightly reduced, suggesting that Richards had overestimated the value of his estate.
MGS
Literary References: Gunnis 1968, 319; S of L, 36, 1970, 264; Colvin V, 1973-76, 438, 473, 479; Beard 1985, 690, 693; Beard 1986, 1278-91; Beard and Gilbert 1986, 742; Beard 2003, 47-51
Archival References: IGI; GPC