Details of Sculptor

Surname

Webber

Alternative Surname

First Name

Henry

Initial of Surname

W

Year of Birth/Baptism

1754

Flourished

Year of Death

1826

Biographical Details

A sculptor and modeller, Webber was born in London in July 1754, the third son of Abraham Wäber. His father was a Swiss sculptor who had settled in England sometime before 1744 and married an Englishwoman named Mary Quant, at St George, Hanover Square. Henry Webber’s elder brother was the painter John Webber, who was later to become known for scientific illustrations made during Captain Cook’s last voyage.
In 1772, at the age of 17, Webber enrolled at the Royal Academy Schools to study sculpture, winning a silver medal two years later (20). He first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1775, giving his address as 4 Down Street, Piccadilly. In 1776, by unanimous decision, he won a gold medal for a highly competent relief of The judgment of Midas (8). In addition he submitted a sketch (presumably in pencil) of Pyrrhus killing Priam.
In 1779 he exhibited a classical relief at the Royal Academy from 28 Great Portland Street, Cavendish Square (9). Little information has emerged on Webber’s work at this time, though he is known to have studied under John Bacon RA, whose background in modelling for manufacturers may have influenced the course of Webber’s own career. On 8 May 1782 Webber signed a contract to work for Josiah Wedgwood at a wage of eight guineas a month, apparently recommended by Sir Joshua Reynolds and Sir William Chambers. Wedgwood called Webber ‘the first in his profession in England’ (quoted in Tattersall 1985, 36) and immediately bought from him a sketchbook of classically-derived designs, at a cost of £16 9s. On 1 January 1785 he signed another contract, this time for seven years and was appointed head of the ornamental department at Wedgwood’s factory at Etruria, with an annual salary of £250. He left London, by his own account, in too much of a hurry even to pay his debts.
In July 1787 Wedgwood sent Webber to Rome, partly to garner antique sources from the Capitoline Museum for future use at the factory, but also to act as a cicerone to his employer’s 21 year old son, John Wedgwood. The agreement made it clear that Webber was to go ‘for the purpose of making models, drawings and other improvements in the art of modelling and designing for the benefit of the said Josiah Wedgwood’ (Webber-Wedgwood agreement). Webber and Wedgwood Junior travelled to Rome via Paris, Geneva, Genoa and Florence, and spent nine months in the Eternal City. Whilst there Webber bought copies after the antique and set up a modelling school which commissioned works from Italian artists such as Camillo Pacetti, Giuseppe Angelini and Allesandro Cades. He must also have worked with John Flaxman RA and John De Vaere, who were employed by Wedgwood in Rome at this time.
On his return to England in 1789 Webber modelled the Wedgwood copy of the Barberini Vase (23), known in England as the Portland vase after its ducal owner. Webber retained a position of considerable authority at Etruria until 1794 and must have had overall control over the artistic design of the factory’s products. Nevertheless it remains difficult to identify with certainty the works which Webber himself modelled. His magnum opus is thought to be the statuette of Britannia triumphant, developed from a statue of Minerva, which appears on John Bacon’s monument to Lord Chatham in Westminster Abbey.
By August 1794 Webber had parted company with Wedgwood and wrote to offer his services to William Duesbury of the Derby porcelain manufactory, citing as a reference only ‘the general approbation with which the public have honour’d the numerous various studies I have produc’d both at Rome, and at Etruria’ (Bricknell 1995, 77). Webber appears from the subsequent correspondence to have been in a strong professional position at this time, having an offer of work abroad and ‘fortune enough to live on without any employment’ (ibid, 87-8). Despite a desire to continue to work he seems to have been in a poor state of health, and hoped to avoid doing so in London. In the course of guarded negotiations with Duesbury’s representative, Joseph Lygo, in May the next year Webber agreed to take a part-time post at the Derby works at an annual salary of £100. He also produced a design for the Derby works to accompany their Palamor and Lavinia. In the event Webber never took up the job, postponing the appointment in a letter to Duesbury in July 1795 because he had recently won a commission ‘for a monument to be plac’d in Westminster Abbey’ (ibid, 91).
This unnamed monument was the work commemorating David Garrick (1), and was awarded to Webber following the sudden death of John Hickey, who was the original choice as sculptor. Despite some initial difficulties in confirming the commission and receiving a first payment, the monument was completed and unveiled in May 1797. It shows Garrick, in Vandyck costume, taking his last curtain between two columns of the Abbey’s arcading, whilst figures of Tragedy and Comedy mourn his exit. This was an innovative adaptation of dramatic Baroque motifs to emphasise Garrick’s profession, the Universal Magazine considered it worthy of the sculptor’s ‘improved talents’ and added that it afforded ‘a happy earnest of what in future may be expected from them’ (Univ Mag 1797, Pt II, 73). This was not the view of Charles Lamb, who took a turn in the Abbey and found himself ‘not a little scandalised at the introduction of theatrical airs and gestures into a place set apart to remind us of the saddest realities’ (quoted in Gunnis 1968, 417).
Only one other monument by Webber is known, to Henry Askew and his wife in Newcastle (2). It has two female figures and a child garlanding an urn decorated with profile portrait medallions of the deceased. The additional motif of a pelican feeding its young is drawn directly from the work of John Bacon RA. Despite the artistic influence which his former master had on his work, Webber and Bacon appear not to have liked one another. In January 1796, in conversation with Joseph Farington, Bacon said that Webber ‘never seemed to have the feelings of honour or principle’ nor was he ‘even anxious to preserve the appearance of it’ (Farington 2, 473).
In 1802 Webber began to invest in property and his sculpture dried up, which suggests that he was happy to enjoy a more sedentary life, relying on his investments. In 1821 he was living at 36 Great Coram Street and owned two properties in Lisson Grove, Marylebone and two more in Great Portland Street. He died in the afternoon of 7 August 1826 at the home of a Mrs Kincaid at 11 South Crescent, Bedford Square. A ‘very old friend’ of Webber, Captain William Small, communicated the news of his death to Webber’s former charge, Josiah Wedgwood II, in a letter which survives in the Wedgwood archives (Small/Wedgwood).
Webber appears to have had no family and in his will he left annual sums of £150 to two London hospitals, to be funded by the rents on two of his properties. His two other dwellings were bequeathed to a spinster, Eliza Tuigrouis of the Strand. He left four gifts of £100, one of them to John Wedgwood, who was his executor. A gold watch, which he habitually wore, was left to the master of the Mint in Bern, Switzerland. He also requested that £500 be paid to Sir Francis Chantrey to provide a suitable monument for his brother John, who had died in 1793. Chantrey was indeed paid for the monument in 1831, though its location has not been ascertained.
Assessments of Webber’s abilities and his contribution to British sculpture have not been uniform. Margaret Whinney summarily dismissed Webber’s work, including the remarkable monument to Garrick, and bemoaned the lack of influence which the time in Rome had had on the sculptor. Bruce Tattersall has more recently posited Webber as an unjustly neglected sculptor whose eclectic sensibility produced, in the Garrick, one of the most striking monuments of the eighteenth century. Tattersall argues furthermore that Webber was ‘the first art director in the English ceramic industry’ and as such presages the most important 19th-century developments in industrial artistic production (Tattersall 1985, 36).
MGS
Literary References: Farington vol 2, 473; Graves, VIII, 1905-6, 186; Graves 1907, 274; Hutchison 1960-62, 138; Gunnis 1968, 417-8; Pyke 1973, 155; Bindman 1979, 48; Tattersall 1 985, 36-42; Clifford 1985, 294; Whinney 1988, 316, 318; Chantrey Ledgers 1991-2, 249; Bricknell 1995, 77, 78, 87-8, 90, 91, 92; Reilly 1995, 459; Young 1995, 55, 90; Ingamells 1997, 984; Hauptman 1999, 41-52
Archival References: RA Premium list; Webber/Byerley
Additional MS Sources: Papers, including memoranda, accounts, receipts and sketches (c100 items) 1782-1826, Wedgwood Archives, Keele University Library
Portraits of the Sculptor: Portrait of a Sculptor (? Webber), by John Webber, Kunstmuseum, Bern, Hauptman 1999, 41-52 (repr)
Miscellaneous Drawings: Designs for Wedgwood, including the Triumph of Mars, four statues, a Marine Venus and over 30 other unidentified subjects, untraced but recorded in a memorandum in the Wedgwood archives (Young 1995, 41 and Tattersall 1985, 36); design for the Sydney Cove medallion (for Wedgwood), 1789, modelled by William Hackwood (Tattersall 1985, 38, repr)
Will: PROB 11/1717/79