Details of Sculptor

Surname

Woodman

Alternative Surname

First Name

William I

Initial of Surname

W

Year of Birth/Baptism

c1654

Flourished

Year of Death

?1731

Biographical Details

Woodman was a mason-sculptor whose monuments were largely conservative in character, though in his late career he was responsible for one that showed sound knowledge of the latest compositional trends (8). He was apprenticed in 1668 to a haberdasher, Francis Devonshire, but then chose to become a mason and was turned over to William Mathews, becoming free of the Masons’ Company in January 1678. In 1689 he became an assistant of the Company, he was renter warden in 1702, upper warden in 1703 and master in 1708. Woodman’s wife, Elinor, assisted him in the business and they had a son, William Woodman II. The entry ‘Mr Woodmans in Queen Street’ appears in the list of masons living in the City recorded in the general search of 1694, together with ‘William Woodmans man at work in Fanchurch St’ (Knoop and Jones 1935, 73, 78).
Woodman’s building work included the Resurrection Gate at St Giles-in-the-Fields, 1687, in which was set a wooden relief of the Resurrection of the dead, carved by an otherwise unknown carver named Love. In 1705 Woodman and his son William built a house for Lord Ashburnham at Brockborough Park, Beds. On 1 December that year Ashburnham sent instructions to ‘William Woodman Senior & William Woodman Junior att the Dairy House in Brockborough Park’ to pay the bricklayer, John Rentham, for his services. They were also instructed to pay £20 to Francis Bushby, the carpenter (Ashburnham Letterbook, ASH 845, 271).
In the early 1700s he supplied marble work for Sir John Germaine’s buffet room at Drayton House, Northants. A receipt for £5 7s 6d signed by Woodman ‘on Acct. of marble work’ is dated July 1705 and Elinor Woodman signed a receipt for £11 18s 6d in May 1704 ‘for four Marble tables’ (9). An unsigned bill with comparable handwriting lists ‘the Ritch Italian veind Marble Chimney peece in the Great Hall at Drayton by Agreemt. £40.00.00’ and adds ‘for Loading and Carrying of the Marble Table and Cistern and Rd. carryage to Westmstr. £00.16.06’. The bill includes small sums for ‘rubing stoping pollishing and Glazeing ye Marble Table’ and for ‘pollishing stoping and Glazeing ye Marble Cistern’ (10). Parts of the buffet room marble work still exist at Drayton, notably the two cisterns and portions of cornice work. There is also a receipt signed by Henry Gates ‘for the use of my Master Mr Wyman’ for a chimneypiece priced £4 5s and this may well refer to Woodman (Stopford Sackville Archive MM/A/466). All this supports an attribution to Woodman of Sir John Germaine’s monument (†1718) in St Peter, Lowick, which has a reclining figure in armour.
In 1704 Woodman finished the monument to the 4th Earl of Leicester at Penshurst, said to have been begun by William Stanton, though the style suggests that Stanton had no involvement with the executed work (4). Several of Woodman’s signed monuments are tablets with decorative embellishments (2, 6), but a few are more ambitious: that to the Earl of Romney (†1704), damaged in World War II, is nonetheless an imposing work with its great trophy of arms and a shield of Medusa. A curious feature is pair of twisted columns joined at the base by clasps in the form of earls’ coronets (3). The monument to Nicholas Monck, Bishop of Hereford (a brother of General Monck), has a fashionable pyramid (7).
Woodman’s acknowledged masterpiece commemorates Viscount and Viscountess Newhaven (8) and was probably inspired by the monument to John, Duke of Buckingham in Westminster Abbey, 1721-22, carved by the Flemish sculptors Laurent Delvaux and Peter Scheemakers. The viscount is a relatively stiff reclining figure in state robes, reminiscent of effigies carved at the turn of the 18th century by Grinling Gibbons. He lies on a sarcophagus and behind him is a pyramid. By contrast his wife’s effigy, seated at his feet, is posed in a vital, informal manner and carved with extraordinary skill. The monument was probably commissioned soon after Newhaven’s death in 1728, but the remarkable image of Lady Newhaven appears to have been added after her death in 1732, by which time Woodman had also died. It was probably carved by Henry Cheere. Gunnis noted that this ‘remarkable’ memorial in its rarely-visited church ‘is one of the most outstanding monuments in England’.
Gunnis brought to light a curious minute penned in the Court Book of the Masons’ Company in 1719. It desired Woodman to visit a certain Mr Robinson ‘who alleages to have Discovered an Art to Glaze Corner Stones for Chimneys and prevail with him if he can to produce a specimen to the Company of one of these stones 4. ffoot long, and then this Court will further consider of the Proposition by him made to the Company’ (Masons’ Co, 1695-1722, fol 185r).
Woodman evidently ran a large workshop, engaged in a range of activities. Seven of his assistants are recorded in the Masons’ Company apprenticeship lists, none of whom appear to have worked independently as sculptors. Robert Price joined him in 1686 and was turned over to Thomas Stayner in 1692; Edward Walker was described as his ‘clerk’ in 1696; John Baker was apprenticed in 1703, William Clare in 1715, Charles Wright in 1719, John Bishop in 1720 and Robert Webbe in 1721.
A number of fine drawings confidently attributed to Woodman is listed below and suggests a more extensive practice than hitherto established. (Inf. Bruce Bailey)
IR
Literary References: Notes & Queries, vol 5, 23 Jan, 1864, 67 (Resurrection Gate); Gunnis 1968, 442; Whinney 1988, 251, 253; Webb 1999, passim
Archival References: Masons’ Co, Freemen , fol 72, 21 Jan 1678; Masons’ Co, Masters and Wardens
Attributed Drawings: Design for a monument to Sir Robert Clayton, his wife and infant son, c1703: HMI/Leeds City Art Galleries, 1999.0008 (Leeds 2001, 12, repr); design for a cartouche monument, VAM D.1100-98; design for the monument to Lady Brownlow, †1700, at Sutton, Surrey, VAM D.1104-98; design for a monument with a standing figure of a man in chancellor’s robes, D.1105-98; unfinished design for a monument, VAM D.1113-98; monument design based on S Gribelin, A Book of Ornaments, 1700, pl 1, VAM D.1139-98; design for a monument to Lady Roberts, †1690, at St Mary by Bow, London, VAM E.959-1965