Details of Sculptor

Surname

Carter

Alternative Surname

First Name

Thomas II

Initial of Surname

C

Year of Birth/Baptism

Flourished

Year of Death

1795

Biographical Details

In the mid-19th century at least one scholar suggested that Carter had been ‘reckoned among the first statuaries of the kingdom’ in his day (Hutchins 1861, vol 1, 403). He was the nephew and son-in-law of Thomas Carter I, and the business partner of Benjamin Carter, 1756-66. Like his kinsmen, Thomas II was the master of a prosperous workshop, which sent out fine chimneypieces, and also two of the most distinctive monuments of late 18th-century England.
He married his cousin Elizabeth in February 1752 and was already established as a sculptor by 1756 when he was described as a ‘statuary’ in his father-in-law’s will. Elizabeth inherited a third of her father’s property, so that within a few weeks her husband was in a position to go into formal partnership with his uncle, Benjamin Carter, and began to pay annual rates of £10 on a property next to Benjamin on Hyde Park Road. The partnership ended when Benjamin died.
Benjamin’s complex (and partly illegible) will directed that his half share in the business should pass to his wife and son at the formal expiration date of the partnership with Thomas, but that in the meantime an annual allowance should be made for the maintenance of Benjamin’s family. This financial arrangement seems to have agitated Thomas. One of the last contracts completed in partnership with Benjamin was for chimneypieces at Sir Edward Knatchbull's house at Mersham, Kent (25, 27, 28). Thomas wrote to Knatchbull requesting payment for work undertaken at Mersham, since ‘the Executors of my late partner have advised me to settle all my accounts.’ The response was not encouraging, for Sir Edward declared himself ‘a stranger as to what engagements you have entered upon concerning your partner’ and added callously, ‘you may have heard of buying a pig in a poke’ (T Carter II/Knatchbull).
Carter’s financial difficulties do not appear to have had any adverse effect on the range, output and quality of his independent workshop. By 1768 he had taken over Benjamin’s former premises, rated at £24, and rates on the smaller adjacent property were paid by a ‘Mr Cramphorn,’ perhaps a relation of William Cramphorn, who was apprenticed to Thomas Carter on 9 June that year. Carter continued to offer ornate chimneypieces as his principal stock-in-trade. These were often designed by leading architects, including Robert Adam, who had worked with the Carter partnership for several years (2, 4, 17, 18, 20, 22, 29, 31, 33, 39, 40, 41). Thomas’s new connections included Robert Mylne the Younger (36) , Sir William Chambers (45), Henry Holland and Sir John Soane. He worked on a number of commissions in conjunction with Soane, earning £935 for chimneypieces at one residence (58). In or around 1783 Carter was employed by Henry Holland, who was altering Carlton House for the Prince Regent (53). Carter also worked to his own designs: Lady Louisa Connolly, who negotiated with Carter on behalf of her sister, Emily, Duchess of Leinster, sent the Duchess ‘three drawings of Mr Carter’s for chimney-pieces’ on 28 March 1776 (47). An accompanying letter suggests that the sculptor was accustomed to penny-pinching clients; ‘he [Carter] says that Corinthian capitals are much the most expensive part of the chimney-piece, so that in another order you may have as showy a chimney-piece for much less money (Fitzgerald 1957, vol 3, 192).
Carter’s numerous apprentices included John Daintrey (or Daintee), John Walsh, and Thomas Earley, who was probably a relative. Joseph Nollekens apparently commented that ‘Tom Carter always had a clever fellow with him to produce his work’ (Smith 1828, II, 307), and it seems that Carter made a practice of choosing talented assistants, whether as full-time employees or for a single contract. Peter Vangelder, who joined the workshop c1769 was paid 2 guineas a week and specialised in floral decoration, although he is known to have carved an unnamed statue in around 1776. John Deare, who was articled to Carter around 1776, was initially paid as little as half a guinea a week, but 7 years later he provided Carter with a tablet for a chimneypiece at a cost of 24 guineas. Deare felt that Carter took advantage of his assistants: ‘it is a custom with him to make large promises to young fellows, by which means he has gained grease to keep his carriage going’ (ibid, 309). Though he accused Carter of cupidity, they ended their working relationship amicably and he judged Carter ‘a blustering fellow, but a good man’ (ibid, 304).
Around the time that Deare joined the workshop, Carter provided a monument to a noted 17th-century politician, Chaloner Chute, Speaker of the House of Commons in the Long Parliament (7). It was commissioned by a descendant, John Chute, an amateur architect and friend of Horace Walpole, and erected in a specially constructed chapel at The Vyne in Hampshire. The memorial has a full-size figure of the Speaker, reclining on a woven pallet, his head resting on his hand, a hat and book by his side. A near-contemporary, Samuel Egerton Brydges, recorded that the effigy was carved by John Bacon RA from a portrait by Van Dyck, a plausible suggestion since sub-contracting was a practice of the workshop. The terracotta model for the figure is finely detailed and possesses all the harmony and grace of the finished work (VAM). The Speaker is clad in the dress of his day but rests on a large, classically-inspired pedestal with fluted Ionic columns, interspersed with mannerist cartouches recording the family’s history. Carter’s detailed invoice makes it clear that he oversaw each aspect of the production and erection of the monument, and gives a breakdown of costs including marbles at £335 9s 11d, carving of the effigy and ornaments at £504, packaging, transport, and the travel costs of the mason and polisher sent down to Hampshire. The total cost was £940 17s 9d (Chute 1954, 1733).
In 1777 Carter moved from the large house on Hyde Park Road (now renamed Piccadilly) to another property in the same street, where he stayed until 1789. The move prompted two auctions of his superfluous stock, including marble ‘wrought and unwrought,’ second hand chimneypieces, tables, busts, casts, tablets, figures and ‘four models of terra quota.’ These were displayed beforehand in his yard, and in ‘The Great Room upstairs’ was an array of stones and marbles from sites throughout the British Isles, Italy, Egypt and Africa. ‘Mr Bird’, almost certainly the marble merchant, Edward Chapman Bird, was a major purchaser of the uncarved blocks. It seems that Carter was also involved in the marble trade, for in the same year the auctioneer, Willoughby, advertised a sale of newly imported marbles at ‘Mr Carter’s Wharf called Stangate Wharfe, on the Surry side of Westminster-Bridge.’ The catalogue invited orders for Portland stone.
Carter continued to provide monuments from his new premises, the most notable of which commemorated Mary Benyon (8). This graphic work, commissioned by Richard Benyon of Gidea Hall, Essex, illustrates in high relief the moment of his mother’s death. An attendant tries to support her dead mistress’s head, whilst another gazes on in agonised disbelief. It is not clear whether Carter himself had a hand in this theatrical tour-de-force, though he certainly received a part-payment of £100. The sculptor largely responsible for another monument has been identified: Peter Mathias Vangelder, who worked regularly for Carter and carved the ornaments on the monument to Mrs Frampton (9), a tablet framed by cultivated and wild flowers. Vangelder was working under Carter’s direction before June 1776, earning 2 guineas a week, and was ‘one of the best hands in London at foliage’ (Smith 1828, II, 306). The monument was ‘esteemed by connoisseurs one of the completest pieces of sculpture in the kingdom’ (Hutchins 1861, vol 1, 403).
The Carter workshop completed one notable monument in the 1780s, a draped pyramid with portrait medallions and rich ornaments to Carew Hervy Mildmay (10), and continued to supply chimneypieces, for instance at Woburn Abbey, until the early 1790s (55). In 1789 the sculptor ceased to pay rates on the property in Piccadilly, and at the time of his death in 1795 he was living in Sloane Street, in the village of Knightsbridge. He was a wealthy man, who left leasehold and freehold estates, farms, lands and tenements, as well as bequests totalling more than £4000. His will suggests that his personal life was complicated. He provided for his wife, his daughter Rebecca, and his grand-daughter Emma Earley, but also left a substantial inheritance to his ‘reputed son’, Thomas, and gifts of £500 each to 7 other children mothered by a Mrs Sarah Moss.
During the earlier-20th century Thomas Carter was largely forgotten, but the discovery of his responsibility for the Chute monument led to a re-appraisal of his work. In 1954 the sculpture historian Margaret Webb, believing that Carter had personally carved Chute’s effigy, suggested that ‘he must now rank as one of England’s greatest sculptors’ (Webb/Gunnis 1954, 25). The claim is exaggerated, but Thomas Carter II and his two forebears deserve recognition as shrewd proprietors of a long-lived and thriving family business. The high quality of their chimneypieces and monuments is a testament both to their artistic standards and to their skill in recognising and utilising the talents of emerging sculptors.
MGS
Literary References: Brydges 1789-91, 59-60; Smith 1828, II, 304-7; Hutchins, 3rd ed. 1861, vol 1, 403, vol 4, 248-9; Webb/Gunnis 1954, 25; Chute 1954, 1733-4; Fitzgerald 1957, vol 3, 192; Gunnis 1958, 334; Cummings 1968, 659-67; Gunnis 1968, 85-6; Whinney 1988, passim
Archival References: Rate-Books, St George, Hanover Square, WCA, 1758 (C300), 1768 (C311), 1777 (C348), 1789 (C369); T Carter II/Knatchbull; GPC; IGI
Wills: Thomas Carter I, PROB 11/824 fol 313-5; Benjamin Carter, PROB 11/923 fol 173-6; Thomas Carter II, PROB 11/1257, f152
Auction Catalogues: Carter II, 1777 (1); Carter II, 1777 (2); Carter II 1777 (3)