Details of Sculptor

Surname

Sibson

Alternative Surname

First Name

Henry

Initial of Surname

S

Year of Birth/Baptism

Flourished

1826-1863

Year of Death

Biographical Details

He first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1826, giving his address as 84 Margaret Street. In 1844 he showed small statues of Marlborough and Bacon at Westminster Hall (2, 3). The Literary Gazette called them ‘pretty pieces of costume - The Duke is all over in the Louis Quatorze fashion.’ The Art Union remarked that though there was ‘life and movement’ in the figure of Marlborough ‘whatever merit it possessed was annihilated by the heavy and graceless boots.’ The same journal felt that the head of Bacon was ‘successful as expressive of thought’, but complained that Bacon’s dress was inappropriate to the subject. Bacon was shown meditating corrections to his great work the Novum Organum Scientarium. ‘We cannot believe’, they wrote ‘that Bacon wrote his Novum Organum in state robes, and therefore ought not to have been represented in such when mediating corrections.’ Sibson's last recorded address, in 1863, was 9 Douro Cottages, St John’s Wood.
Literary References: Graves VII, 1905-6, 121 ; Gunnis 1968, 351