Details of Sculptor

Surname

Stanton

Alternative Surname

First Name

William

Initial of Surname

S

Year of Birth/Baptism

1639

Flourished

Year of Death

1705

Biographical Details

William Stanton was a mason, sculptor and architect and was for 30 years the proprietor of one of London’s leading workshops. He was born on 6 April 1639, the nephew of Thomas Stanton and the son of Edward Stanton (1596-1686), who may have been the craftsman responsible for setting up the clock at the Royal Exchange. William was apprenticed to his uncle and became free of the Masons’ Company on 30 June 1663. His first monument appears to have been to John Byde (2) and he took his first apprentice in 1666. In 1674 he inherited his deceased uncle’s business.
In 1678 he was employed nine men and ran what was then the largest mason-sculptor’s premises in London, at St Andrew’s, Holborn. Monumental sculpture formed a significant part of his wide-ranging business. The output ranged from minor building works (such as the columns erected in the cloister of the Inner Temple in 1680 for £20), to major contracts. He was the mason at Gray’s Inn from 1672 until his death. Stanton was involved with Edward Pearce in rebuilding St Andrew, Holborn, to designs by Sir Christopher Wren, at a cost of £4,050. He also built Belton House, Lincs for Sir John Brownlow between 1685 and 1688, earning over £5,000. Like his uncle, Stanton was able to rise through the ranks of the Masons’ Company, becoming a renter warden in June 1681, an upper warden in October 1683, and master in 1688-89.
Stanton’s funerary sculpture ranges from inscriptions on ledger stones to large figural compositions but he was chiefly in demand for architectural wall monuments. Typically these consist of an inscribed tablet, sometimes carved to emulate hanging drapery, flanked by columns or pilasters and often surmounted by a segmental scrolled pediment. Other recurring features are putti, large floral scrolls and flaming urns. The monuments ranged in cost from £10, the price for the monument to Dr Balcanqual (15), to £64, the fee for Sir Justinian Isham’s memorial, which has twisting columns of dove marble (59). On occasion a monument incorporated superbly executed figural elements, such as the two half-length effigies on the monument to Sir John and Lady Brownlow (20), or the naval trophies and relief of a ship on Lieutenant-Colonel Spencer Broughton’s memorial (74). There are dozens of contemporary unsigned works all over England which make use of Stanton’s combination of motifs, and which probably also emanate from the Holborn workshop.
From 1670 onwards Stanton produced large-scale effigial memorials. The Harison monument incorporates a kneeling and a standing figure (25) and the Lucy, a cross-legged recumbent effigy watched by his wife reclining on one elbow, and their son, who stands beside them in a long wig and large-cuffed coat (44). The reclining figures of Earl Rivers (39) and Lord Coventry (60) have considerable grace, the former posed beneath a marble canopy held up by black Corinthian columns, the latter gesturing towards a crown and flanked by two angels.
His most impressive sequence of figures was perhaps produced for the Shireburn family at Stonyhurst. Soon after 1695 Sir Nicholas Shireburn embarked on an extravagant programme of improvements to his house and Stanton was engaged to provide building and sculptural work, to which end he sent his man, John Mason, to Lancashire for extensive periods (97-99). In 1699 Stanton was paid for four effigies for the family church in Mitton which reflect the Royalist Catholic leanings of the family, both in the wording of the inscriptions and in the use of traditional, recumbent figures (51-53). A later monument, to Richard Francis Shireburn, depicts the pathetic figure of the last of the Shireburns, a boy of nine, who starts back in fear from a skull and crossbones, emblems of mortality (77).
The Masons’ Company search of September 1694 recorded that Stanton employed eight men at his ‘shop’ in Holborn, including William Holland, a future master of the Masons’ Company. Over the course of his career Stanton took 24 apprentices, including William Atkins I and Thomas Hill II, Robert Hartshorne I, who came to the workshop as an assistant, and John Thompson, his master-mason at Belton. His ninth child, Edward Stanton, was apprenticed to him in 1694 and became free in 1702. The payment for the monument to Richard and Isabel Shireburn, 1699 (51), is made out to Edward, which suggests that the younger Stanton had taken on an important role in the workshop by that date. It is not always possible to disentangle the early work of Edward Stanton from that of his father, and in the following list, memorials to persons who died before 1705 are treated as works of William Stanton, as head of the business until his death in that year, unless there is contrary evidence (Edward Stanton’s signature, documentation or style).
Stanton’s last known work was the quirky monument to the 4th Earl of Leicester, 1704, which has two angels, apparently running towards a central, festooned urn (85). This was completed by William Woodman I. Stanton died on 30 May 1705 and was buried two days later at St Andrew, Holborn. He was survived by his wife Dorothy (1640-1707), whom he married c1665, and who was described on the family tombstone as ‘a prudent tender wife and mother’ (Le Neve 1650-1718, 104-5). In his will, witnessed by two of his employees (John Sumners and Robert Swift), Stanton appointed his wife sole executrix and left her his personal estate, goods and property. He left £400 to his son, Thomas Stanton, who had also been apprenticed to his father and had become free in 1702. Whether Thomas took any later role in the family trade is unclear, for he soon departed for Livorno, Italy. The business was taken over by Edward Stanton, who continued to run the family workshop with success.
MGS
Literary References: Le Neve 1650-79, 1680-99, 1700-15, 1650-1718 passim (memorials are authenticated as Stanton works if their inscriptions are printed in Le Neve with Stanton credits); Builder 1846, vol 4, n152, 2; Inderwick 1896-1936, vol 3, 157; Esdaile 1930, 149-69; Knoop and Jones 1935, 20-1, 69, 78; Isham 1951, 440; Gunnis 1968, 367-8; Physick 1969, 14, 16, 24, 26, 28, 48-53; Whinney 1988, 84, 93, 135-8, 251, 445 n67, 446 n2-3; Colvin 1995, 916; ODNB (Fisher)
Archival References: Masons’ Co, Masters and Wardens; Stanton/Isham; Stanton/Hatton; Stanton/Masons’ Co; Stanton-Isham Agreement
Will: PROB 11/483, 152, 2 June 1705 (transcribed in Esdaile 1930, 156)
Collections of Drawings: 21 attributed designs for monuments, VAM 93.B.41 (D.1114-8-98, D.11120-32-98, D.1138-98, D.1140-1-98)