Details of Sculptor

Surname

Taylor

Alternative Surname

First Name

Robert I

Initial of Surname

T

Year of Birth/Baptism

c1690

Flourished

Year of Death

1742

Biographical Details

He was the father of the sculptor-architect Sir Robert Taylor (1714-1788) and a successful master mason and monumental sculptor in his own right. The son of a yeoman from Campden, Taylor was apprenticed to the mason Richard Garbut on 6 December 1705, and became free of the Masons’ Company on 2 October 1712. He was master of the Company in 1733 and clearly took his civic responsibilities seriously for he became a captain in the City’s trained bands. In 1723 he subscribed to John Dart’s Westmonasterium as ‘Mr R. T., Mason, in Greyfriars’ and in 1726 enodorsed Dart’s History of the Cathedral Church of Canterbury in like manner.
Taylor worked for several of the City Livery Companies. He was paid £19 7s for unspecified masonry, commissioned by the Ironmongers’ Company in 1722, and his work for Masons’ Hall included a chimneypiece (15). He received £69 from the Grocers’ Company for decorative carving undertaken in 1735-l736 (18) and Gunnis suggests that he acted as master-mason for the Barber Surgeons when their theatre was rebuilt to designs by Lord Burlington. From 1725-39 he was mason for the Royal College of Physicians and he was also responsible for a good deal of building work at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, 1728-40 (14, 16). In 1728 he rented two tenements in Duck Lane from the governors of the latter Hospital. When the contract to build the London Mansion House went to tender on 16 May 1738 Taylor, Christopher Horsnaile II and a haberdasher, John Townsend, competed with a rival team of masons headed by Thomas Dunn and John Devall. After much jockeying all five shared the contract, providing obelisks, plinths and paving in addition to structural work.
Records of Taylor’s contribution to domestic buildings are scant but the Hoare partnership ledgers record a chimneypiece supplied to Stourhead in 1724 (13). In 1732 he received a further £150 for unidentified work at Stourhead and in 1733 another £98. Gunnis thinks these payments were probably for chimneypieces, but tentatively suggests that Taylor may have had something to do with the building of Alfred’s Tower in the grounds, or with the carving of King Alfred’s statue.
Taylor was responsible for a number of elaborate, if repetitive, monuments in which he made use of a range of coloured marbles. The Kidder (1) has a reclining female in a skimpy shift gesturing towards the plain slab behind her, which is framed by a curtain, winged cherubs’ heads and sunbeams within composite columns. The Askel (2) is a wall monument with pilasters, flaming lamps, and cherubs at either side, one clasping a skull. Gunnis considers the Deacon (7) his best work and Whinney notes that it is in the manner of Francis Bird. It has a reclining effigy in contemporary dress, with a baroque flourish to the draperies covering the lower body. Deacon again gestures at the inscription slab behind him and he clasps a skull in the other hand. The Corinthian frame is decorated with heads of putti backed by clouds, and sunbeams slant through. The Raymond (4) is an architectural wall-tablet with an armorial shield and winged cherub-heads on the apron, and the Napier (9) uses a similar vocabulary of ornaments, but includes two stocky females on either side of the architectural frame. The Chester (12) is a little different, for it has a relief panel of Chester’s widow and children above the inscription tablet. The classical pilasters are flanked by seated cherubs and two boys sit at the bottom of the slab on the gadrooned base. All the figures gesticulate dramatically.
The names of several apprentices are listed in the archives of the Masons’ Company. John Percy joined him in 1715, Francis Cunningham in 1722 and John Mallcott in 1730. Charles, ‘son of Robert Taylor of Christchurch, London, Mason’ was apprenticed on 23 June 1737 to Thomas Fletcher of Chipping Campden.
The obituary, written by Horace Walpole in the Gentleman’s Magazine of the son, Sir Robert Taylor, notes ‘His father was the great stone-mason of his time; like Devall in the present day he got a vast deal of money; but again, unlike him altogether, he could not keep what he got. When life was less gaudy than it is now, and when the elegant indulgences of it were rare, old Taylor the mason enjoyed them all. He revelled at a villa in Essex; and as a villa is imperfect without a coach, he thought it necessary to have that too.To drive on thus, at a good rate, is generally thought pretty pleasant by most men; but it is not apt to be pleasant to their heirs. It was so here. For excepting some common schooling; a fee, when he went pupil to Sir Henry Cheere, and just enough money to travel on a plan of frugal study to Rome, Robert Taylor got nothing from his father.’ (Anecdotes 1937, 192). (Add inf, AL/RG)
IR/MGS
Literary References: Webb (3), 1957, 116; Gunnis 1968, 381; Whinney 1988, 248-9; Jeffery 1993, 49-50, 67-8, 297, 300; Colvin 1995, 962; Webb 1999, 9, 19, 21, 25, 32
Archival References: Ironmongers, WA, vol 10, fol 19; Masons’ Co, Freemen, fol 68; Masons’ Co, Court Book, 1705; Court Book, 1722-51 (29 Oct 1742); Apprenticeship Lists, 1737; Charles Taylor, Hoare partnership ledger, 1725-34, 1725-34, fol 272, 22 Dec 1732 (£150); fol 282, 4 July 1733, Joseph Cox’s bill to Robert Taylor (£98)