Details of Sculptor

Surname

Carter

Alternative Surname

First Name

Benjamin

Initial of Surname

C

Year of Birth/Baptism

1719

Flourished

Year of Death

1766

Biographical Details

He was the younger brother of Thomas Carter I and the uncle of Thomas Carter II, with whom he worked in partnership, 1756-66. He was christened in Datchet, Bucks, on 8 July 1719. Nothing is known of his training or early career, except that he supplied chimneypieces for Longford Castle, Wilts, in 1739 (4). He appears to have worked with Thomas I from 1751 until his brother’s death in 1756 and was rated on a property next door in Piccadilly. Thomas I clearly considered Benjamin competent enough to take over the business, because under the terms of his will he left his brother all the ‘working shops’ and utensils, and the lease of his house, rated at £24. Benjamin was also given the option to buy ‘all the drawings, models, marble and Portland stone’. Benjamin seems to have wasted little time in consolidating his position. By 28 September 1756, he had entered into co-partnership with Thomas Carter II, who began to pay annual rates of £10 on the property next to Benjamin in 1758.
One of their first collaborative commissions was on 3 chimneypieces for the London house of Thomas Bridges at 18 Cavendish Street (6-8). The partners both signed receipts for payments for this work, completed between May and September 1757 at a cost of £210. The architect Henry Keene supervised the contract, endorsed the designs and guaranteed that the entire commission, including the polishing, would be approved by him personally. Benjamin appears to have been one of the team of craftsmen employed by Keene, which included the carpenter John Phillips (who was Thomas Carter I’s executor), the mason Thomas Gayfere and the carver Thomas Dryhurst. In 1760 Carter, Gayfere, Dryhurst and several other craftsmen were the subjects of a conversation-piece commissioned from the painter, Robert Pyle, as a gift for Keene. The central figure is Keene himself, pointing to a plan on the table for an unidentified building. Carter, in a wig and coat, appears to be challenging Gayfere, for the two craftsmen face each other, leaning awkwardly over the backs of their chairs.
In 1752 Carter provided the model for a lion which later became a local landmark above the central elevation of Northumberland House, London (3), then being refurbished by Keene. The Carters completed two fine chimneypieces for the house in 1757 (5). The cross-members had relief tablets, one carved with putti draping a lion with festoons and the other, putti draping an eagle. Each massive overmantel was supported by caryatid figures, variants of the Farnese Captives. The two sculptors received a handsome sum, £292, for their work.
The taste for classically-inspired ornaments was well served by the Carter workshop. In 1761 Benjamin modelled plaster reliefs for Henry Hoare’s Pantheon at Stourhead at a cost of £268 (24). These reliefs, long thought to be by Michael Rysbrack, included a Roman Marriage Ceremony and a Triumphal Procession of Bacchus, both after engravings in Montfaucon’s L’Antiquité Expliquée, 1721. A number of other payments to Carter appear in the Hoare Accounts including a pedestal of coloured marbles for the ‘Florence box’, and another, for an unknown site, of ‘Sienna, Genoa green, and black marble’(25). They have not survived and were probably destroyed when the house was gutted by fire in 1902.
In 1763 the partners supplied slabs of marble to Horace Walpole and his architect, Richard Bentley, for a pair of commodes at Strawberry Hill (28). There is a curious reference among Walpole’s letters which indicates that this was not his first contact with the sculptors. In July 1755 Bentley suggested that Walpole should ‘traffic with Carter’ personally and Walpole responded acidly ‘do you think I can turn broker, and factor, and I don’t know what?’ (Lewis 1937-83, vol 35, 231).
Walpole was involved in the preliminary stages of Carter’s most notable project, the monument to Lieutenant-Colonel Roger Townshend erected in 1761 in Westminster Abbey (2). Lady Townsend asked Walpole to recommend an artist to design a monument for her ‘brave son’ and Walpole, whose talents did not include draughtsmanship, provided a drawing himself (Lewis 1937-83, vol 40, 166-8). It was not used, but the monument as realised was an exemplary instance of collaborative practice. It was designed by Robert Adam, the low relief of the dying hero was modelled by Luc-François Breton, and the work’s construction seems to have been directed by the two Carters, who also probably carved the handsome caryatid figures supporting the sarcophagus. These take the form of North American Indians and allude to Townsend’s death at the battle of Ticonderoga in 1759. The monument was signed by both Carters and by the German sculptor, John Eckstein, who was employed by the workshop to carve the relief from Breton’s model. The architect, Matthew Brettingham, felt that there was ‘nothing equal to it in the Abbey’ (Fleming 1962 (2), 169).
In the 1760s the Carters were employed extensively by Robert Adam to execute his designs for chimneypieces at Bowood (15-19), Lansdowne House (13) and Syon House (23). At Syon they collaborated with ormolu manufacturers to execute Adam’s designs for opulent fireplaces, charging £144 6s 6d for designing and modelling ornaments, carving mouldings to encase the metalwork and ‘fitting and working the ornaments together’ (Harris 2001, 78). Their assistant, Robert Staveley, was responsible for setting up the Bowood chimneypieces, and also worked for them at Ashburnham Place, Sussex (12).
The precise nature of the Carter partnership is unclear but it seems likely that Benjamin was in control for in 1763 the workshop was advertised in Mortimer’s Universal Director under ‘Carter, Benjamin, Statuary, Hyde Park Corner’ (p 6). He died late in 1766 and was buried in Datchet, leaving his share of the business, including all the ‘stocks and effects’ to his son John and wife Ann, who also inherited his household goods; he also made provision for three younger children. One of his executors was the marble merchant Edward Chapman Bird. Benjamin’s son, John Carter (1748-1817), was the celebrated and eccentric antiquary, draughtsman and writer, noted for his championship of medieval sculpture and architecture. He later claimed that from the age of 12 he had prepared designs for assistants in his father’s workshop.
MGS
Literary References: GM, April 1812, 82, pt 1, 341; Smith 1828, II, 307; DNB; Smith 1945, 556; Fleming 1962 (2), 169; Gunnis 1968, 84; Lewis 1973, vol 35, 231; vol 40, 166-8; Haskell and Penny 1981, 170; Allen 1983, 200; Harris 2001, 78
Archival References: IGI; Poor Rate, St George, Hanover Square, WCA, 1751 (C240), 1757 (C298), 1758 (C300); Carter/Keen Accounts; Archives, Marquess of Lansdowne; Ashburnham Archives; Hoare Private Accounts 1750-66, passim; 1752-78, I May 1759
Wills: Thomas Carter, 3 Sept 1756, PROB 11/824 fol 313-5; Benjamin Carter, 13 Nov 1766, PROB 11/923 fol 173-6
Miscellaneous Drawings: design for a chimney-piece, signed, sold as part of an album of chimneypiece drawings, Marlborough Rare Books, cat 81, 25 November 1977, lot 68 (repr)
Portraits of the Sculptor: Robert Pyle, Henry Keene and his Craftsmen, 1768, formerly at Buxted Place, Sussex (destroyed); Smith 1945, 556-7 (repr); John Carter, after Robert Pyle, nd, pen, ink, wash and watercolour, BM, PDB, 1908, 0714.48