Details of Sculptor

Surname

Spence

Alternative Surname

First Name

William

Initial of Surname

S

Year of Birth/Baptism

1793

Flourished

Year of Death

1849

Biographical Details

A Liverpool sculptor, he specialised in funerary monuments and busts. Spence was born in Chester and moved to Liverpool c1808 to study under a wood-carver and drawing master, Mr Pether. In Liverpool he was befriended by John Gibson, then employed by Samuel and Thomas Franceys, a local firm of stonemasons. This friendship was to be of great importance for Gibson introduced Spence to the Franceys brothers who consequently engaged him as a modeller. In 1819 Spence became a partner in their firm, renamed Messrs Franceys and Spence, and he took over the whole business in 1830.
A number of funerary monuments by Spence, largely in Wales, are to people who died before 1810. These are, if correctly identified as his work, likely to be later commissions, for his earliest known works are two lost pieces, Centaurs Pursuing Dante and Young Hymen, 1812 (137, 138). They were exhibited at the Liverpool Academy, and attracted the attention of the Liverpool banker, MP and anti-slavery campaigner, William Roscoe, who was also a major patron of Gibson. Roscoe commissioned a bust of himself from Spence, exhibited at the Liverpool Academy in 1813 and replicated in various materials (76). Roscoe made attempts to encourage Spence to go to Rome to extend his study of Antique sculpture, but Spence declined and did not visit Italy until much later in life, when his son, the sculptor Benjamin Spence, was studying there. Spence’s loyalty to Liverpool made him a fixture in the regional art establishment and he continued to exhibit at the city’s Academy until the end of his life. In 1828 he was made master of drawing from the Antique in the Academy’s schools, and in 1845 he became the Academy’s treasurer.
It was unusual for Spence to show outside Liverpool. Two known exceptions were Caractacus before Caesar and Aristides showing the shell to the Vates, shown at the Westminster Hall Exhibitions, London, in 1844 and 1845 respectively (71, 72). It is worth noting that these rare forays into the London art world co-incided with exhibitions that helped launch the career of his son Benjamin, suggesting filial influence. Spence also showed drawings and carved works at the Polytechnic Exhibition in Leeds in 1845, including busts of the Reverends Hugh McNeil, Dr Raffles and J Brooks (104, 111, 117).
An assessment of Spence’s ability as a sculptor is limited, since little of his enormous output appears to have survived. Most of his church monuments are still intact, but they are often repetitive and not generally considered to be his best work. Many may have been workshop pieces and Gunnis considered them dull. Almost all his ideal works, busts and reliefs are lost or attributions, making it difficult to concur with J A Picton’s view that Spence was surpassed by few ‘for quickness in modelling and readiness in catching the expressive lines of a countenance’ (Picton, 1875, II, 218). He died in Liverpool on 6 July 1849, aged 56.
Michael Paraskos
Literary References: Lit Gaz, 27 July 1844, 482; E Twycross, Mansions of England and Wales (Lancs), 1847, vol II, 50; A J, 1849, 95; GM, 1849, II, 435; Picton, 1875, II, 218; Redgrave 1878, 408; Gunnis, 1968, 363; Cavanagh, 1997, 209-11; Morris and Roberts, 1998, 721
Archival References: Letters of John Gibson, NLW MS 4914-5D