Details of Sculptor

Surname

Scheemakers

Alternative Surname

First Name

Thomas

Initial of Surname

S

Year of Birth/Baptism

1740

Flourished

Year of Death

1808

Biographical Details

The only son of Peter Scheemakers, he was born in July 1740, perhaps in the vicinity of Old Palace Yard, Millbank, where his father had premises. His mother was probably Barbara, née La Fosse, Peter’s widow, whose name is mentioned on her husband’s death certificate. The paternal workshop moved to Vine Street, Piccadilly, late in 1740, where Thomas Scheemakers received his training and worked alongside Joseph Nollekens. In the mid-1760s he began to show with the exhibiting societies and in 1765 won a Society of Arts premium in the historical bas-relief class (74). The following year he gained the first premium with another classically inspired relief (76), beating Thomas Banks into joint second place. He continued to exhibit regularly throughout his career.
All sculpture from the Scheemakers workshop went out in the father’s name until 1771, when Peter retired to Antwerp, aged 80. Thomas Scheemakers must necessarily have taken a major hand in monuments from the early or mid-1760s, working to the designs of James Stuart, the fashionable Greek revival architect. Stuart lived nearby, first in Vine Street and then round the corner in Glasshouse Street.
The first publicly-announced collaboration between Thomas and Stuart appeared in the catalogue of the Free Society of Artists exhibition in 1765. Scheemakers exhibited two bas-reliefs ‘designed by Stuart’, and showed other works to the architect’s designs in 1770 and in the early 1780s (22, 24, 48, 75, 89, 93, 94). In 1771 the pair signed their first collaborative monument, to the 4th Earl of Shaftesbury (1). It has a bust all’antica on a socle above a sarcophagus, attended by winged boys. The following year Scheemakers briefly attended the Royal Academy schools, perhaps anxious about the future of the partnership, since Stuart was often ill. The pair nonetheless signed seven more monuments between c1773 and 1783, making use of a repetitive vocabulary of profile heads in roundels, mounted on or over massy sarcophagi. The monument to Ralph Freman, †1772, is characteristic, for it takes the form of a heavy, polychrome sarcophagus with a scrolled lid, adapted from an Antique original at Scopolo. It supports a double portrait roundel of numismatic appearance, and there are other portrait roundels on the wall behind (2). The design was repeated with minor modifications for the monument to Thomas Steavens, c1773 (4), while a purer version of the Scopolo sarcophagus, with strigil decoration and lion’s feet was used for the monument to Josiah Wedgwood’s partner, Thomas Bentley (21). A drawing for this monument in Thomas’s hand survives and suggests that Stuart’s involvement may not have been extensive. The memorial to Joseph Cocks, †1778, is again a variant of the Freman, this time with the addition of a Greek key border (12). That to Mary Cocks, †1779, breaks from the sarcophagus theme, but is conventional in composition. It presents a Bible-carrying figure of Hope, in classical garb, beside an urn, while a putto extinguishes a torch (17). The extent of Stuart’s involvement in these competent but unimaginative works is open to question. It seems likely that he provided only working sketches, for a sheaf of carefully finished hand-coloured designs for 25 memorials by Thomas, including the signed monuments, has survived and testifies to his own dogged competence as a draughtsman.
By the early 1780s Stuart had lost interest in the partnership. Thomas was now sufficiently well-known to attract his own clientele and he went on to produce more varied work. The monument to General Sir John Honywood, †1781, has a fine bust en negligé (20) and the success of the work led to other Honywood commissions (59, 67). His most competent and imaginative monument, to Mary Russell, was completed in 1787 (30). This has a lovely round-limbed, lightly draped effigy, reclining on a sarcophagus which is carved with a crisply-realised relief medallion of the deceased teaching music to a child. Musical trophies, including an organ, ’cello and harp, flank the medallion. The monument to the noted blue-stocking, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, 1789, is disappointing, given the character of the subject commemorated. It has another grieving classical female, leaning against a fluted vase (33).
Scheemakers carved or modelled a number of portrait busts, but these are largely untraced, so his abilities in this field cannot be evaluated, but given the extraordinary skill in portraiture displayed by his prolific contemporary Nollekens, Scheemakers must have struggled to compete. Several of his busts were reproduced in plaster, perhaps as a marketing experiment, since they seem to have been left on his hands (66, 68, 69).
Apart from his exhibition entries, nothing came out of the workshop at 6 Titchfield Street, Oxford Market after 1790. On 21 May 1805 he sold up his entire collection of terracotta models, reliefs from the Antique, a ‘Capital’ marble chimneypiece and his working tools. Peter Turnerelli bought a number of his models and casts and some modelling equipment. Scheemakers, who was a Roman Catholic, died on 15 July 1808, and was buried in St. Pancras churchyard; the inscription on his tombstone spelt his name ‘Sheemakers’. His wife Barbara, who died at the age of 63, survived him by two years and was buried in the same grave. There were no children and the sculptor appears to have died intestate.
Scheemakers’s career reads as a series of missed opportunities, for he had a thorough training as the only son of a successful sculptor, he collaborated with a fashionable architect at the outset of his career, and he enjoyed the opportunities for publicity afforded by the new exhibiting societies. The challenge he could not surmount came from the more talented and energetic sculptors who were his rivals and who were elected Academicians, Nollekens, Thomas Banks and John Bacon RA.
IR/MGS
Literary References: Gunnis 1968, 344-5; Roscoe 1987, 178-84; Sullivan 2006, 394-401 (repr)
Archival References: Paving rates, Church Ward, St James, Piccadilly, 1768, WPL E. 1721
Collections of Drawings: 25 designs (some identified), VAM 8408-1878, pen, ink and watercolour
Miscellaneous Drawings: monument to a woman, VAM 8408.19; wall monument, VAM 8408.23; unidentified monument HMI, 30/1989 (repr Friedman 1993, 90, cat 2)
Auction Catalogues: Scheemakers, Thomas, 1805