Details of Sculptor

Surname

Stanton

Alternative Surname

First Name

Edward

Initial of Surname

S

Year of Birth/Baptism

c1681

Flourished

Year of Death

1734

Biographical Details

Edward Stanton was a sculptor and mason, and the last successful head of the family workshop in Holborn. He was the ninth recorded child of William Stanton and was apprenticed to his father in June 1694. Before he completed his apprenticeship Edward had evidently assumed an important role within the workshop, since a payment for the monument to Richard and Isabel Shireburn was made to him in 1699. He and his brother, Thomas Stanton, became free of the Masons’ Company by patrimony on 15 June 1702, and that year he was granted a licence to marry Sarah, a daughter of the mason Samuel Fulkes.
Edward Stanton took over the workshop after his father’s death in May 1705. Like his father, he carried out masonry work at the Inner Temple, receiving £127 in 1707, and he retained the patronage of the Shireburns at Stonyhurst (139, 141). His assistant, John Mason, was still on site in 1715. In 1708 Stanton became mason to the City of London and in 1711 he was paid £273 for work at the Guildhall, and £520 for building ‘Three Cranes Stairs’ (City Cash Account 1/27). He secured the lucrative post of mason to Westminster Abbey, and in 1719 he and his family moved into a house with a wharf nearby (WA Muniments 65635). In December 1719 he entered into a written agreement with the Dean of Westminster to carry out repairs, with a bond penalty of £2,000 (WA Muniments 65663). At Westminster Abbey he was principally employed in rebuilding the north front: between 1720 and 1723 and was responsible for all the carved stonework, for which he received no less than £6,038 (143). In 1723 he subscribed to Dart’s Westmonasterium and the Stanton coat-of-arms was appended to his name in the list of supporters. In 1726 he subscribed to Dart’s History of the Cathedral of Canterbury. He was still supervising masonry work at the Abbey in 1726, on this occasion making good the damage caused by workmen erecting G B Guelfi’s monument to James Craggs. In 1721 he worked at Leicester House, London.
Stanton ran one of the most successful masonry businesses in London and in 1719, having served as a renter warden in 1713-14, and as an upper warden 1716-17, he became the third successive head of the family firm to become master of the Masons’ Company. He was also a captain of the City’s trained bands, a position of some status, and was often called ‘Captain Stanton’ in documents relating to his work. Other masonry contracts followed, for the parsonage of St John’s, Clerkenwell in 1725 (PRO c108/140) and for the demolition of Bishopsgate in 1730-2.
He was one of the most prolific monumental statuaries of his time and provided the antiquary John le Neve with the inscribed texts for approximately 160 memorials supplied by the Stantons. These were incorporated in Monumenta Anglicana, published in five volumes in 1717-19. It is evident that more than two thirds of those memorials were produced whilst Edward was in charge of the workshop. Most of the surviving monuments are unsigned and many are minor works such as ledger slabs. The texts provide important evidence of the extent and range of his monumental production. Like his father, Edward was principally in demand for inscribed tablets, often carved with a panel simulating drapery, framed with columns or pilasters and topped with a pediment or arch. Ornaments such as crossed palm branches and garlands of fruit and flowers enlivened some compositions. Sir Justinian Isham, who had employed the sculptor’s father, returned in March 1714, to order a monument for Elizabeth, Lady Isham, his late wife (94). Having settled, in writing, the terms of the contract, Isham said of Edward Stanton ‘I believe the man to be fair dealing in his profession, and therefore may be trusted in what he saies, which makes me not so strict in drawing up the agreement’ (quoted in Isham 1951, 440).
Stanton was capable of more elaborate work. Sir Francis Russell’s reclining effigy was presented craning his neck to look into the eyes of his kneeling widow, as both gesture to the inscription tablet behind them (17). The monuments to Sir William Lytton and Sir George Strode (9, 25) both feature reclining figures of the deceased and are similar in composition to William Stanton’s monument for Lord Coventry. Another notable monument is Richard Acton’s, which has half-length figures of the deceased and his wife (106).
Stanton’s wife died in October 1717 and in April 1718 he married Lucy Child at St Anne and St Agnes, Aldersgate. In 1717, also, he won an important commission, in competition with Richard Saunders, Andrew Carpenter, Robert Hartshorne I and a Mr Bushnell, to execute the statue of King George I for the Royal Exchange (130). A payment of £60 ‘in full for making his Majesty’s Statue set upp in the Royal Exchange’ was recorded in the City Cash Accounts on 19 December 1718. The payment to Michael Rysbrack for his Exchange statue of George II, 1729, was disbursed through Stanton, who as city mason, was responsible for disbursements for public buildings (City Cash Accounts 2/35 1729, fol 63b).
Around 1720 Stanton went into partnership with Christopher Horsnaile I, and together they provided a number of chimneypieces, carried out masonry work, such as the building of a new dormitory at Westminster School, 1726-1730, and signed a series of monuments. These are chiefly architectural wall-monuments incorporating ornaments such as a festooned urn, bat-winged skulls, putti, and floral scrolls. The monument to Jacob Wishart is surrounded by an array of naval trophies and a relief of a man of war (118). More ambitious is the monument to Thomas Vernon, which features a stumpy effigy in wig and robes, flanked by two female virtues under a grand pediment (115).
In May 1730 Stanton’s second wife died at their home in Hampstead, and he married Jane Churchill, daughter of the mason Robert Churchill. Stanton clearly had a sound reputation at this time, for the St James’ Evening Post reported his second wife’s death and referred to him as ‘a great stone-cutter’ (quoted in Esdaile 1930, 166). He died in May 1734 and in his will, proved on 20 June, he left over £1,740, including £40 to his ‘honest and industrious copartner’, Christopher Horsnaile. He asked to be buried ‘by daylight in the north churchyard of St Andrew’s, Holborn, towards the enginehouse door’. His library was sold in November 1735.
Stanton’s eldest son, William, became master mason to the Mint and the Navy by 1727 and sold marble and stonework from the family premises. In 1735 William fell into debt and was declared bankrupt. His property went to auction in May 1736. Another son, Edward, was apprenticed to Joseph Selby, ‘Citizen and Fishmonger’ for seven years in May 1737 at a fee of £150. An Edward Stanton was on the livery of the Masons’ Company c1740, when his address was given as ‘the Star in Smithfield’ (List of Masons’ Assistants, fol 3).
His brother, Thomas, appears to have spent most of his life in Italy and left for Leghorn after joining the Masons’ Company. In 1742 he was removed from his post as assistant to the Masons’ Company, having been one of the court of assistants for 40 years without, latterly, attending their meetings. Another brother, William, became beadle of the Company and died in 1753, when his widow was granted a pension. Yet another family member, also William, had a mason’s yard ‘near Bloomsbury Church’ in 1763, while a ‘Mrs. Stanton, widow’ was a pensioner of the Company until her death in 1785.
Gunnis and Whinney both considered Edward Stanton to be less skilled and sensitive as a sculptor than his father. Conversely, Colvin, in assessing Stanton’s large and varied output as a whole, calls him ‘one of the greatest of the eighteenth-century sculptor-masons’ (Colvin 1995, 916).
MGS
Literary References: Le Neve; Inderwick 1896-1936, vol 3, 406; Esdaile 1930, 149-169; Bolton 1934, 43; Knoop and Jones 1935, 21; Isham 1951, 440-2; Webb 1957 (3), 115; Gunnis 1968, 366-7; Physick 1969, 26, 52, 64-5; Douglas Stewart 1978, 219; Friedman 1979-80, 75-90; Whinney 1988, 84, 135, 138, 139-42, 248, 446 n2; Colvin 1995, 916; Roscoe 1997, 179-80; Ingamells 1997, 889-90; Craske 2000 (2), 97; Bilbey 2002, 156; ODNB; Craske 2007, 15 (repr)
Archival References: Masons’ Co, Assistants, fol 3; Freemen, fol 66; City Cash Accounts 1/27, 2/35 1729, fol 63b; WA Muniments 65635; Minutes of WA Chapter Meeting, 16 Feb 1726/7; Westminster Abbey Archives; Archives, Lord De L’Isle; PRO c108/140; IGI
Will: PROB 11/665, fols 368-9, signed 31 March 1733
Drawings: Design with contract, 1713, for a monument to Sir Edward Bagot, Staffs RO D3259/5/45
Auction Catalogues: Library sold with two others as Bibliotheca Splendidissima, 17 November 1735 (Colvin 1995, 916)