Details of Sculptor

Surname

Walsh

Alternative Surname

First Name

John

Initial of Surname

W

Year of Birth/Baptism

Flourished

1757-77

Year of Death

Biographical Details

In 1757 he won a premium for a cast of a clay model of the Dying gladiator at the Society of Arts, at which time he said he was an apprentice of ‘Mr Carter’ (9). A second premium of five guineas followed in 1759 for a model of Bacchus (11), but was withdrawn after it was shown that he (and Joseph Nollekens) had been assisted in their work by Joseph Wilton. Wilton protested that his input had been 'very trifling' (Minutes of Polite Arts Committee, 24, 29 March 1759, quoted in JKB 2009, 44, 46 n22). Walsh gave his address as South Street, Berkeley Square in 1757 and was described as a ‘statuary, of St George’s, Hanover Square’ in the apprenticeship registers of 1769.
Richard Trevor, Bishop of Durham, paid Walsh £26 in 1764 for his coat of arms in Portland stone (16). This was placed on an exterior wall of Glynde chapel, Sussex, which was designed that year by Sir Thomas Robinson. He appears also to have worked for Sir William Chambers and hoped to execute three chimneypieces under the architect’s supervision for a Mr Errington, whose new house near Hexham had been designed by Chambers. Errington also had a house in St James’s stable yard, London, and the chimneypieces may alternatively have been intended for that residence (13). Chambers wrote to Errington in 1770-1, saying that he believed ‘Mr. Walsh’s proposals about the chimney-pieces are reasonable and if he will send me the size of the tablet, I will make a drawing for it. In a day or two I shall have the drawings done for your other two chimney-pieces, and I will send for Mr. Walsh to hear his proposals. I think he will execute them very well’ (Chambers’s Letter-Books, Ad MS 41133, fol 31).
Walsh evidently had a thriving practice for he had a number of apprentices. In 1769 he took on Charles Hoswell and George Egellstone. William Braithwaite joined him in 1771, Philip Colley in 1772, Andrew Leicester and Charles Fleming in 1775 and Russell Brown, Eyre Crotty and Thomas Baily in 1776. His output included several architectural monuments: that to Stephen Soame at Little Thurlow, Suffolk has a portrait-medallion of Mrs Soame and her child (7).
In 1777 Walsh was commissioned to provide a wall monument to commemorate the architect Sir Thomas Robinson in Westminster Abbey (8). Robinson had stipulated in his will that the work was to incorporate busts of himself and the Dowager Lady Lechmere, executed in Rome in 1730 by Filippo della Valle and Edmé Bouchardon respectively. Walsh’s monument combined several kinds of veined marble with a statuary urn, fasces and a sarcophagus with strigil decoration.
In October 1775, a John Walsh, who may have been a relation, became free of the Masons’ Company by redemption, having served his apprenticeship with Thomas Carter II.
Literary References: Graves 1907, 275; Gunnis 1968, 412; RG/JP, 8, 1513; Baker, Harrison, Laing 2000, 752-62
Archival References: Masons’ Co, Freemen, fol 7