Details of Sculptor

Surname

Smith

Alternative Surname

First Name

Nathaniel

Initial of Surname

S

Year of Birth/Baptism

1738

Flourished

Year of Death

after 1800

Biographical Details

He was the father of Joseph Nollekens’s biographer, J T Smith, and was described in his son’s obituary as a sculptor and afterwards, a printseller. Most of his work was produced as an assistant to more success sculptors. Nathaniel was the son of Thomas Smith, a Shropshire clothier and was christened at Eltham, near Woolwich, on 30 June 1738. J T Smith’s obituary states that Nathaniel ‘was the playfellow of Joseph Nollekens, R.A., and both learned drawing together at Shipley’s school, then kept in the Strand, at the eastern corner of Castle-court, the house where the Society of Art had its first meeting’. On 7th Aug. 1755, Nathaniel Smith was placed with L F Roubiliac, and ‘had the honour of working with him on some of the monuments of Westminster Abbey’ (GM 1833, i, 641). The latter assertion should be treated with caution since it is likely to have come from J T Smith himself. Smith’s Burrell monument has a medallion portrait backed by drapery (1) and derives from Roubiliac’s Harvey monument at Hempstead (1758).
Nathaniel showed early promise, winning four premiums from the Society of Arts between 1758 and 1762 (9-12), by which time he was probably living in St Martin’s Lane. His winning drawing in 1759 was of Roubiliac's group of Hercules and Atlas. From 1767-9 he was in Portland Place. After Roubiliac’s death he became Joseph Wilton’s assistant. According to J T Smith, the much admired bust of Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield, 1757, was modelled by Wilton but actually carved by Nathaniel. The exact circumstances of the commission are unknown but the bust was presumably carved for Chesterfield House, London. Young Smith also claimed that his father spent three years carving the figures on Wilton’s monument to General Wolfe in Westminster Abbey, and that he ‘executed a great deal of the sculpture on Somerset House [some of it with John Atkins] for which Wilton received the money’. Whinney notes that Wilton’s work there included statues of the four continents on the attic at the north side of the court and 4 of the 8 colossal masks of rivers on the Strand front, together with vases, lions and chimneypieces. Smith carved three heads of river gods, designed by J B Cipriani (8). By 1779 he had become Nollekens’s principal assistant (inf. JKB).
Smith’s early prize-winning relief, Bringing down the stag, is an astoundingly graphic and naturalistic work, a fine achievement which well endorses the decision of the Society of Arts to award him a premium (10). The model of Alderman Beckford for a statue in Guildhall was submitted in competition with Agostino Carlini, John Flaxman RA and others. John Francis Moore won the contract. It again endorses Smith’s competence and invites speculation why such an obviously talented craftsman never gained an independent reputation. Graves notes a secondary career, describing him as a ‘Sculptor and Miniature Painter’, who showed miniatures at the Society of Artists in 1767-9 and 1773 (Graves 1907, 241).
Literary References: Smith II, 1828, 110; Whinney 1988, 198, 267, 461 n32 ; Dawson 1999, 10, 68; Bilbey 2002, 152-3; IGI; Wilson 2007, 73-83; Wilson 2009 (1), 122
Will (?): PRO/FRC PROB 11/1493 (described as sculptor and printseller of Greenwich)
Miscellaneous Drawings: ‘Drawings of figures from Models’ premium, under 22 category, Soc of A, 27 Feb 1759 (RSA Minutes, 1758-60, seq 2 fol 27)
Auction: Smith 1803; Smith1809
Portraits of the Sculptor: ‘There is a portrait of him etched by Wilde; and small painting on panel by the same artist is also preserved’; untraced (GM 1833, i, 641)