Details of Sculptor

Surname

Boson

Alternative Surname

First Name

John

Initial of Surname

B

Year of Birth/Baptism

c1696

Flourished

Year of Death

1743

Biographical Details

A carver in wood and marble, he was probably the ‘John Boson, son of Michael Boson of Witham, Suffolk,’ who was apprenticed to Jarvis Smith, a joiner for eight years on 1 May 1711 (Joiners’ Apprentices 1710-24, fol 5). He began life as a carver of wooden figureheads for ships, but in the 1720s and early 1730s he was employed on four of the new Queen Anne churches built by Nicholas Hawksmoor, St John, Westminster, St George, Bloomsbury, St Alphege, Greenwich and St Luke, Old Street (8, 9, 17, 18, 21, 26). In 1727 he petitioned the authorities for payment for his work at St George’s, having received only £73 of the £221 owing to him and claiming to be ‘a young man in Trade reduced to very great inconvenience’ (Lambeth Palace Library MS/2690-2750/2728 f55). His yard was at Greenwich, where he produced altar, pulpit and screen carving in wood, as well as a font in marble (8, 9). Boson received further commissions for ecclesiastical furniture carving in Westminster Abbey and Canterbury Cathedral (10, 12). At the latter, where he worked under the architect John James, he carved the altar, on which he appears to have worked with John Balshaw, or Belshaw, who received payments for carving work on the same. He was also responsible for the ornaments on the façade of East India House, in partnership with John How (15), and also supplied chimneypieces (7). He was paid £189 19s 7d for unspecified ‘carver’s work’ by the company in April 1730, which may be the bill for either of these commissions.
He continued his diverse practice in the 1730s. For the Prince of Wales alone he produced a marble chimneypiece, ornate picture frames, and carving on the Prince’s state barge (3, 24, 32, 34). The connection was a lasting one: at the time of Boson’s death he appears to have been working for the Prince, who paid his last bill to Boson’s executors.
Boson’s most notable work is the marble frame for the monument to Anne, Duchess of Richmond (1). The design, featuring caryatid figures and classical decoration, is taken from the frontispiece to the English edition of the Fabbriche Antique disegnate da Andrea Palladio (1730), published by Lord Burlington in 1730. William Kent was responsible for this frontispiece. The monument is signed ‘[Joan]nes Boson Anglus Sculpsit’ and ‘Andreas Pallad[io] Vincentinus Invent’. The bust of the deceased in the centre of the frame is by the Italian sculptor Giovanni-Battista Guelfi. It is possible that Boson’s inclusion of ‘Anglus’ on his signature was intended to stress the native roots of the carver, in contradistinction to the bust’s author. Boson carved furniture to designs by William Kent for Lord Burlington’s villa at Chiswick. The pier tables with matching glass frames are a rare example of known surviving furniture carved by Boson (29). He was later a subscriber to Isaac Ware’s edition of the Four Books of Andrea Palladio (1738). Boson clearly had a longstanding interest in architectural carving: in 1726 he subscribed to Giacomo Leoni’s English edition of Alberti’s Della Architettura.
In 1735 Boson leased a house from Lord Burlington, a handsome tripartite, pedimented building at 22/23 Savile Row. This may have been designed by William Kent. Boson lived there with his wife until his death, ‘of an age not considerably above middle aged’ in 1743 (Vertue III, 116). In his will, proved in April that year, the carver left his estate in the hands of three trustees, James Horne, the architect and surveyor John Thornhill, and George Lambert, the painter. He made bequests to his brothers Michael and Francis, his sisters Martha and Mary and his foreman, Thomas Nicholls the Elder, who received £10. To Mary Norman, the daughter of Barak Norman, a musical instrument maker of St Paul’s Churchyard, he left the contents of his dwelling-house in St Ann’s Hill, Chertsey. In a telling addition he also left her £15 yearly for each of her children yet unborn and that ‘shall be born before the expiration of nine months after death.’ He also mentions his father-in-law Francis Rayer. Vertue described Boson as ‘a man of great ingenuity’ who ‘undertook great works in his way for the prime people of quality and made his fortune very well in the world’ (Vertue III, 116). The lack of surviving work makes it difficult to assess his achievements, but his connections to the leading taste-makers of his day, Hawksmoor, Kent, Burlington and the Prince of Wales, suggest that Boson was a craftsman of some distinction.
MGS
Literary References: Webb 1955 (1), 143; Gunnis 1968, 59; Beard and Gilbert 1986, 88-9; Whinney 1988, 161
Archival References: GPC
Will: PROB 11/725/99 15 April 1743 ‘John Boson, Carver of St James’s Westminster’