Details of Sculptor

Surname

Carew

Alternative Surname

First Name

John Edward

Initial of Surname

C

Year of Birth/Baptism

c1782

Flourished

Year of Death

1868

Biographical Details

He worked initially as Sir Richard Westmacott RA’s principal carver, but then spent 14 years carving portrait busts and mythological subjects for one patron, the 3rd Earl of Egremont, for Petworth. After Egremont’s death, the sculptor was beset by financial problems, but he continued to exhibit and undertook a number of prominent public commissions.
Little is known of his early life.He was born about 1782, at Tramore, County Waterford, and is thought to have been the son of an Irish sculptor. The slender evidence for his father’s occupation is the memorial to Rebecca Briscoe (†1798) once in Waterford Cathedral, signed ‘Carew Fecit Waterford’ (Strickland I, 1913, 152). By 1975 this had been removed, probably to Fiddown, County Kilkenny, where there is a Briscoe monument signed ‘I. Carew fecit’. Potterton has plausibly suggested that this memorial may be an early work by Carew himself, not his father.
Carew may have had some training in Dublin, though there is no record of his attendance at the Dublin Society. He was perhaps apprenticed to a sculptor in the city or he could have attended another school. He left Ireland for London, where he assisted Sir Richard Westmacott from 1809 until 1826 or 1827 and again in 1828-9 (75). In 1812 Carew exhibited his first work, a bust, at the Royal Academy (52). That year he submitted a model in competition for a monument to be erected in Rio de Janeiro (25). Only three models were submitted and in 1815 Carew was awarded the 3rd prize of £50 (Farington XIII, 4667). In 1821 he set up his own studio with one of his brothers at 62 Edgware Road. He may also have worked as a mason for in 1822 ‘J. E. Carew’ submitted a tender, which was not accepted, for building St Peter’s, Regent Square, London (New Churches Report Book, 97).
Carew’s practice was profitable. He later claimed that although at first Westmacott paid him only 5 or 6 pounds a week, by 1823 he was earning about £1,700 annually from Westmacott (Westmacott put the figure at £1,200 p a). In addition there was the income from his own commissions, which amounted to about £800 annually.
A turning point in Carew’s career came when he was introduced to the 3rd Earl of Egremont, a generous supporter of British artists, whose country home, Petworth House, was famous as a centre for artistic society. In 1824 Egremont bought Carew’s statue of Arethusa (28), so beginning a close association between sculptor and patron which lasted until the Earl’s death in 1837. On 5 May 1829 the Cumberland Pacquet carried a report that Egremont had given £10,000 ‘for some very elegant groups’ by Carew, a report contradicted by the Earl a fortnight later. Nonetheless in 1831 Carew moved to Brighton, at Egremont’s request, in order to be nearer to Petworth and in 1835 moved again, to Grove House, Petworth, a property belonging to the Earl. There is a superb collection of Carew’s works at Petworth, including ‘ideal’ , neoclassical subjects, such as Adonis and the Boar (29), Venus at Vulcan’s Forge (31) and Prometheus and Pandora (41) and a number of portrait busts (59-63). Most of these are displayed in the Promethean Hall, which was built in 1836-7, under Carew’s supervision, specifically to house his works. It was exceptional for such a large collection of one sculptor’s works to be displayed together in a purpose-built gallery. Carew undertook several further architectural projects on Egremont’s behalf, including alterations to the chancels at Tillington and Petworth and the design of the Earl’s Brighton lodge. He employed a number of workmen, including James Welch, Carew’s foreman from 1822 onwards, James Lane, a marble mason and W Griggs, who worked as Carew’s assistant for about three months in 1831.
After the Earl’s death Carew claimed that his former patron owed him a considerable sum, successively escalating in his estimates from £5,326 11s 7d to £50,310 5s. In a statement delivered to the Earl’s executors on 13th March 1838 Carew claimed a balance outstanding of £22,485 and argued that in 1823 Egremont had offered to pay him £1,700 a year to leave Westmacott’s employment and work principally for him. He continued by describing the arrangement made between them, ‘I was eight years in Town after that period, during which Lord Egremont occupied the greater portion of my time, and from that period to the present (upwards of seven years) having been induced to quit London on purpose, I devoted the whole of my time and services to his Lordship, sacrificing all the prospects which a residence in town and competition with other sculptors held out during the best period of my life. I built a House and large Studio and Gallery at Brighton at the desire of Lord Egremont and expended upon those, and also with my changes of residence, considerable sums’ (Carew v Burrell 1840, 167).
Two legal disputes ensued, involving Carew and the Earl’s executors. At the first hearing at Lewes Assizes in 1840 his counsel withdrew the suit, since the defence argued persuasively that the Earl had remunerated the sculptor amply, though irregularly, when he thought it appropriate.This was not the end of the matter. During the insolvency proceedings, Carew again argued that giving up an independent career and leaving London at a time when his reputation was growing, in order to work for the Earl, had left him badly out of pocket. This situation was particularly difficult for he was the head of a large family. Carew’s fine statue of William Huskisson in Chichester Cathedral was discussed (10). Carew maintained that the statue had been executed on Egremont’s behalf, whilst the Earl’s executors refused to accept that he had commissioned it. Evidence that the Earl had frequently seen and commented upon the statue whilst the Huskisson Memorial Committee had almost no contact with the sculptor persuaded the court that this work could be claimed as a commission from the Earl. In his summing up, Carew’s lawyer noted the difficulties of defending him against such powerful adversaries. He concluded that Carew was clearly much worse off than he had been before he had entered into his arrangement with the Earl and that it was impossible to make much sense of the figures as neither Carew nor the Earl had kept proper financial records. There was evidently some public sympathy for Carew’s predicament as the Times (19 May 1842, 6) reports that this speech was greeted by a burst of applause by the spectators in the Court. The court ruled that Carew’s total claim against the Egremont estate amounted to £19, 207 18s 5d but he had already been paid £21,331 9s 1d and he was declared bankrupt.
Carew continued to exhibit until 1848 when his eye-sight started to fail, showing largely portraits and religious subjects. In 1842 several went on display at the British Institution, where a statue of a boy playing marbles, The last stake (44), received an enthusiastic response. It was described in the Art Union as ‘a noble and beautiful statue, satisfactory to the anatomist and most valuable to the lover of Art’. A model of the Adoration of the Magi (82) was considered even more successful, and the Madonna and Child which formed the focal point of the group and was also exhibited in marble was described as ‘a glorious conception executed with perfect skill’ (AU, 1842, 77).
Carew undertook several prominent public commissions in the years after the court case. His best-known work, a statue of Sir Richard Whittington listening to the London Bells for the façade of the Royal Exchange, was executed in 1844 (46). In the same year he exhibited A Sleeping Falconer (45) at the Westminster Hall exhibition, having already shown it at the British Institution in 1843. Its success eventually led to a statue of Henry Grattan for St Stephen's Hall in the Palace of Westminster, completed in 1857 (49). On the advice of Sir Charles Eastlake, he was selected to make The death of Nelson, one of the four bronze reliefs at the base of Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square (83). This was attached to the pedestal in December 1849, but there was an uncomfortable postscript to the commission; the founders, Christy, Adams and Hill, were later prosecuted for cheating the government by using metal of an inferior quality for the casting. The work is still in position.
He was responsible for several significant works for Roman Catholic churches. These included an altarpiece depicting the Baptism of Christ for the Chapel of St John the Baptist in Brighton (76). Carew later claimed that the Earl of Egremont had commissioned this work and owed him money for it, although the Earl had written to the local press specifically denying this claim and stating that he had never contributed to the building or decoration of any Catholic church. Carew executed a number of statues still in situ (47, 48, 50) for the magnificent Italianate cathedral at St John’s, Newfoundland and an elaborate altarpiece, which was dismantled during the remodelling of the church in the 1950s (79).
He was awarded a donation of £20 by the Royal Academy shortly before his death in 1868, having lived in retirement for some years and was buried in an unmarked grave in Kensal Green Cemetery. The RA assisted the ‘Misses Carew’ with a sum of £30 in 1869 and a similar sum the following year. His death seems to have gone unnoticed by the press. Other members of his family appear to have become sculptors, for an ‘F Carew’ and ‘F Carew Junr’ exhibited sculpture at the RA in 1834 and 1849 respectively.
Carew has been described as a feckless but charming character. He was considered an exceptionally able carver, whose sculpture combined neo-classical dignity with emotion and realism, but his works were felt to lack intellectual content: his friend, Benjamin Robert Haydon, wrote, ‘as rapid as lightening with his chisel but idle in thought, preferring the chat of a gossiping Coffee House to the glory of fame … cutting heads from memory & statues without Nature, the wonder is he does so well!’ (Haydon Diary III, 1963, 172). (Add inf. Alastair Laing)
EH
Literary References: CP, 5 May 1829,1, 19 May 1829, 3; AU, 1840, 50-1; 1842, 77; 1844, 216; Carew v Burrell 1840; Carew Insolvency Proceedings 1842; The Times, 1841-1845, passim; Builder, 1844, 419; 1853, 624; Strickland I, 1913, 152-4; Palgrave 1866, 125; Finch 1966, 84-96; Gunnis 1968, 78-80; JKB 1972 (3), 329, 331 n27; JKB 1973 (3), 1640-3; Potterton 1975, 38-9; JKB 1977 (2), 367-73; Read 1982, passim; Busco 1994, 42, 93, 175 n115; Grove 5, 1996, 740-1 (Turpin); Egremont 1985, 280-7; Curl 2001, 237-8, 242; FitzGerald 2002, 46-65; Laing 2003, passim; ODNB (Wroth/ Rev Turpin); AAI 2014 [Sullivan]
Archival References: Orchard Wyndham MSS, 1838-41; RA/GA, 1868-70
Portraits of the Sculptor: George Clint, The sculptor with Prometheus and Pandora in the background, c1837, oil on canvas, Petworth House, Sussex; John Simpson, nd, painting, nd, untraced (repr Finch 1966, 84)