Details of Sculptor

Surname

Andrews

Alternative Surname

First Name

James, of Olney

Initial of Surname

A

Year of Birth/Baptism

1735

Flourished

Year of Death

1817

Biographical Details

Andrews taught William Cowper to draw when Cowper lived at Olney. The poet called him ‘my Michelangelo,’ and in a letter to a Mr Newton said that ‘James Andrews pays me many compliments on my success in the art of drawing, but I have not yet the vanity to think myself qualified to furnish your apartment (Wright 1886, 32). Andrews also drew Cowper’s portrait.
He signs a number of local monuments and tablets, the best of which commemorates Alexander Small (1). Gunnis writes that the fine terra-cotta bust of Small is known from the parish records to have been executed by Peter Scheemakers. The work, however, is not typical of Scheemakers and it has not been possible to verify Gunnis’s source. Pevsner notes a number of tombstones by Andrews in the churchyard at Olney. Wright described them as ‘well-carved gravestones[...]embellished with representations of angels, skeletons, cherubs and books’, the finest of which commemorates a pasture-keeper of Weston Underwood, William Lambry (4). It has a ‘farmyard scene – a cut haystack, sheep, trough, crook, shears &c’ (Wright 1886, 30-1). Pevsner notes a number of tablets by Andrews in Piddington, Northants.
Literary References: Gunnis 1968, 18; Pevsner, Northants, 1973, 344; Pevsner, Bucks, 1994, 588