Details of Sculptor

Surname

Collins

Alternative Surname

First Name

of Driffield

Initial of Surname

C

Year of Birth/Baptism

Flourished

c1731

Year of Death

Biographical Details

About 1731 he made the dramatic life-size lead statues of King Athelstan and St John of Beverley at the entrance to the choir of Beverley Minster (1). Oliver said of him that ‘Mr Collins was a clever man. His models of animals were well managed, and his rural subjects, which he was fond of introducing, were generally executed with much taste and feeling. He was a native, either of Driffield or some village in its immediate neighbourhood, but for want of patronage he passed his working days in obscurity and wretchedness and was frequently reduced to absolute indigence.’ The same author recounted that the figure of Athelstan was the artist’s own composition, though that of St John ‘is supposed to have been taken from a graceful and admirably expressed mould, representing Pope Gregory at the moment of regarding an angelic messenger.’ Oliver regarded the former as ‘formed without taste, judgement or consistent effort,’ and bemoaned the ‘false taste of the artist, under whose superintendence so much absurdity has been accomplished’ (Oliver 1829, 326-7 n46).
Literary References: Gunnis 1968, 111