Details of Sculptor

Surname

Voyez

Alternative Surname

First Name

John

Initial of Surname

V

Year of Birth/Baptism

c1740

Flourished

Year of Death

Biographical Details

Voyez was a modeller, who also worked with glass, wood, ivory and marble. He probably came from a family of engravers and metalworkers living near Amiens in the 18th century and appears to have worked for at least a year in a French pottery before coming to England. In 1768, whilst living in Long Acre, he carved a fine glass cameo of King George III in order to qualify as a master. He is also known to have produced a coloured wax model of the royal coach in association with Capizzoldi and he had some connection with an artificial stone manufactury in Goldstone Square, Whitechapel around 1768. His given addresses when exhibiting with the Society of Artists and the Free Society were ‘At Mr West’s Princes Street, St Ann’s’ (1767), Hanley, Staffs (1771) and ‘the Music Shop, Saville Passage, Saville Row’ (1791).
In 1768 Voyez was offered employment by Wedgwood, who apparently had great hopes of him, for he wrote to his partner, Bentley, on 31 March, that he had ‘hired a modeller for three years, the best I am told in London. He served his time with a silversmith, has worked several years at a china works, has been two or three years carving in wood and marble for Mr. Adam the famous architect, is a perfect master of the antique style in ornaments, vases, etc., and works with equal facility in clay, wax, wood or stone’ (Wedgwood to Bentley, 31 March 1768, Wedgwood/Voyez E25/18197). Wedgwood treated Voyez extremely well, paying his debts in London and transporting him and his wife to Burslem. Voyez seemed aware of his good fortune, for when he wrote to Wedgwood’s London agent, Mr Cox, on 19 August, 1768, he spoke of ‘Mr. Wedgwood’s exceeding genteel behaviour to me, who, on my arrival here, entertained us in his own house until our house was gotten ready which was by the usiall diligance or rather delays of joiner Show kept back longer than it otherwise might have been’ (Jean Voyez to William Cox, Wedgwood/Voyez L1/55). In spite of this good beginning, Voyez was in trouble in less than a year and was sentenced to seven years transportation, then commuted, for allegedly stealing clay models and plaster moulds from his master. Wedgwood then apparently regretted having committed Voyez to prison for in a letter to Bentley he ruefully reflected ‘What then do our competitors stand in most need of to enable them to rival us effectively? Some person to instruct them to compose good forms, & to ornamt. them with tolerable propriety. V... can do this much more effectually than all the Potters in the country put together, & without much personal layout, as the ornaments may be bot or modeld by others’. Whilst in prison Voyez carved a figure of Prometheus, chained to the rock with a vulture preying on his liver (5). He later used the same motif on a large vase, modelled for the potter, Humphrey Palmer, which bears his signature and Palmer’s stamp (4).
Wedgwood produced his first vases, including the results of Voyez’s labours, at Etruria in June 1769. These were very successful, but nonetheless anxious about competition from Voyez, Wedgwood tried to coerce him into leaving Staffordshire. Cox wrote indignantly to Bentley on 17 June 1769, to inform him that ‘I have not seen Mr. Voyez and have desired our people to keep him out of here if he should dare to call when I am out’ (Cox to Wedgwood, Wedgwood/ Voyez E5/30867). Voyez later left Palmer for another potter, T Hales of Cowridge, for whom he modelled, among other works, a plaque with classical motifs (1). He also provided models for Ralph Wood, including the Fair Hebe jug, which is thinly cast in the form of a tree-trunk, on which stand several figures with bumpers of ale (14).
This versatile artist was involved in several other activities. In 1773 he published a catalogue of his cameos and intagalios after the antique, describing himself as ‘J Voyez, Member of the Royal Society of Artists of Great Britain’ and gave his address as Cowbridge, near Newcastle, Staffs. To the catalogue, which lists 200 subjects, can be added upwards of 7000 ciphers and seals advertised in 1776, many of them produced with James Tassie. The monopolistic Wedgwood wrote to Bentley on 24 February 1776 ‘Mr Tassie and Voyez between them have made terrible depredations upon our Seal trade’ (Grundy 1958, 113). Voyez also worked as enameller for the firm of Philip Rundell and his works in ivory include a number of small boxes with reliefs of classical subjects. He was clearly a talented and perhaps restless character, temperamentally incapable of accepting the disciplined anonymity that Wedgwood and other manufacturers sought to impose on him. Nothing is known of him after 1773.
MGS
Literary References: Graves 1907, 269; Grundy 1958, 110-5; Hutchinson 1966, 212-15; Gunnis 1968, 410; Pyke 1981, 41