Details of Sculptor

Surname

Sanders

Alternative Surname

First Name

J J

Initial of Surname

S

Year of Birth/Baptism

Flourished

c1812-88

Year of Death

Biographical Details

He was the son of ‘J Sanders, a mason’, but since there were several craftsmen with this name, identification is problematic. There was, for example, a Joseph Sanders who joined the Royal Academy as ‘a sculptor’ in April 1775, but against whose name is an entry ‘to be discharged’ (RA student register). A James Sanders, son of Joseph Sanders, goldsmith of Maiden Lane, was apprenticed to Samuel Newton in 1754 and became free in 1762.
J J Sanders was the mason who carried out repairs to St John, Westminster, in 1812 (Ch W). He can probably be identified with the ‘Sanders of Fitzroy Square, New Road’, who produced a large number of tablets. These are often carved with the popular draped urn motif, though one has a woman mourning (19), another Fame writing on a pyramid (26), and a third an amphora with flowers (27). In 1846 Sanders carved a more elaborate tablet to the memory of John Lydekker (24). The Illustrated London News described this as ‘a neat marble memorial…a tablet, surmounted by a bold pediment on Italian trusses; flanked by two seamen, one with a fractured arm, and the other leaning on a crutch. The tablet rests on a cornice, beneath which, in a panel, is sculptured a scene from the Southern Whale Fishery; the base being a shell and some cleverly-executed foliage’. Gunnis regarded the monument to Walter Strickland (17) as his best but summarised Sanders’s work as ‘dull and uninteresting’ (Gunnis 1968, 339). The firm must have extended to at least a second generation, since the Barker monument, signed ‘Sanders, Euston Road’, dates from 1888 or after (32).
Literary References: Gunnis 1968, 339