Details of Sculptor

Surname

Collins

Alternative Surname

First Name

William

Initial of Surname

C

Year of Birth/Baptism

1721

Flourished

Year of Death

1793

Biographical Details

Renowned in his day for his whimsical reliefs of pastoral scenes, Collins was a notable sculptor in marble and a highly competent modeller in plaster of religious and mythological scenes. He was born in 1721 but nothing is currently known of his family background. He became a pupil of Sir Henry Cheere and subsequent payments to Collins in his master’s bank account suggest that he carved work in sub-contract for Cheere’s thriving workshop.
In December 1751 Collins was described in the London Evening Post as ‘a figure maker at Hyde Park Corner’. The article was a puff for ‘Iron Pear-Tree Water,’ a quack medicine which was claimed to have cured, in a mere 24 hours, a sore on Collins’s leg, that had troubled him for two years. The miraculous recovery was confirmed by John Cheere and his assistants, and it is possible that Collins was at this time working for the branch of the Cheere business which produced multiples in plaster and lead in the Shepherd’s Market area.
In December 1759 he was one of the pioneering group which included Francis Hayman, Sir Joshua Reynolds and Joseph Wilton, who founded the Society of Artists, Britain’s first exhibiting society. At its early exhibitions Collins showed numerous bas-reliefs, including a distinguished scene for Magdalen College, Cambridge, designed by the architect Thomas Lightoler (32). This depicts the moment when Christ’s tomb is found empty by his mourners and the guarding soldiers. The composition has several gradations of relief and the tumult of the drama is conveyed by thick swirling clouds weaving round the figural elements. Soon after its installation a local guide book singled out the work as being ‘reckoned well worth the observation of the curious’ (Cambridge Depicta 1763, 77). Lightoler also designed an Annunciation altarpiece executed by Collins for the Beauchamp chapel at St Mary, Warwick (25), which John Hands described in his guide to the church as ‘a fine bas-relievo of the Salutation, under a Gothic canopy, the whole exceedingly well executed’(Hands c1770, 36).
The bulk of Collins’s exhibited reliefs appear to have been intended for chimneypieces, and J T Smith was later to describe him as ‘the most famous modeller of chimney-tablets of his day’ (Smith 1828, 2, 313). Smith, however, considered Collins’s work to be lacking in nobility: ‘his figures were mostly clothed, and exhibited pastoral scenes, which were understood by the most common observer such as, for instance, a shepherd-boy eating his dinner under an old stump of a tree, with his dog begging before him; shepherds and shepherdesses seated upon a bank surrounded by their flocks; anglers, reapers, etc’ (ibid). Several tablets with pastoral motifs have been attributed to Collins (7, 8, 19, 20) and the similarity of Smith’s description to a known design by Sir Henry Cheere in the Victoria and Albert Museum also suggests that Collins may have been the executant of many of Cheere’s chimneypiece tablets. When Henry Cheere died in 1781 he left Collins £100 in his will.
By 1763 Collins had set up his own workshop in Channel-Row, Westminster, producing work in stone, plaster and marble, usually for decorative schemes in country houses. He executed an elaborate pediment relief at Worksop Manor under the architect James Paine, with an image of the old manor house, destroyed by fire in 1761 and a plan of the new, as well as symbols of the family’s virtue (26). Another pediment relief, for Sandbeck Park (18), was described in Paine’s book of plans as ‘a very fine alto relievo, executed by the ingenious Mr William Collins’ (Paine 1783, 12a).
Working under Robert Adam, he provided decorative roundels on the theme of country life for the external elevations at Kedleston Hall (27) and extensive plaster work for the interiors of Harewood House (23, 29, 30, 38). A number of Collins’s works were offered in Adam’s sale of 1818 (9, 18, 42-45). Adam’s relationship with Collins was not always harmonious: on 18 August 1767 Adam wrote to Sir Rowland Winn of Nostell Priory, for whom he was designing a chimneypiece, telling him that ‘Mr. Collins promised me to have the tablet for the library chimney sent to my house, end of last week, but has likewise disappointed me’. Collins eventually produced a tablet in a material so flimsy that Adam could not find anyone ‘to undertake to fire it for fear of its breaking’. When it was fired the architect’s worst fears were realised, for the piece warped and cracked. The design was finally realised in wood, apparently by another carver (Brockwell 1915, 16-18).
Collins’s most notable works were perhaps for Burton Constable, where he was responsible for three full-size statues including a youthful Mercury and Cupid, competitively rolling dice on a rock (1-3). A design for the plaster oval of Pan and the Graces survives at Burton Constable, marked ‘Collins’ by the owner, William Constable (37). If this work is by Collins it demonstrates not only his developed skills in draughtsmanship, but also his ability to compose original designs.
He died on 24 May 1793 at his house in Tothill Fields, Westminster, and was buried in the old cemetery in King's Road, Chelsea. His entire estate, including properties in Bath and Weston-super-Mare, was left to his only daughter, Elizabeth. The Gentleman’s Magazine carried a notice of his death in June, adding that his ‘works as an artist have been long known and admired in this country’ (GM, June 1793, 577). Collins appears to have been a highly regarded sculptor, as well as a friend to leading painters such as Thomas Gainsborough, whose bucolic aesthetic echoes Collins’s own. The sculptor's gracious rococo works have since elicited charmed responses from commentators such as Timothy Clifford and Mark Girouard, though there has been no full account of his life and work. In Girouard’s words ‘William Collins is an artist who could do with further research’ (Girouard 1966 (2), 189).
A number of convincingly-argued attributions have been included in the list below.
MGS
Literary References : Mortimer 1763, 8; Smith 1828, II, 313; Graves II, 1905-6, 62; Soc of Artists Papers, 1759-61, 116; Girouard 1965, 968; Gunnis 1968, 111-2; Friedman and Clifford 1974, Appendix C; Clifford 1992, 41-2; ODNB (MB); Craske 2000 (2), 100, 112 n16; Baker 2000, 77; Bilbey 2002, 68-9
Archival References: Walton and Dunn Accounts, Burton Constable, 1764; Collins/ Constable 1769
Will: Henry Cheere, PROB 11/1073/95; William Collins PROB 11/1233/303