Details of Sculptor

Surname

Davis

Alternative Surname

First Name

Edward

Initial of Surname

D

Year of Birth/Baptism

1813

Flourished

Year of Death

1878

Biographical Details

Davis, whose family came from Carmarthen, was born in London, the son of Dr David Daniel Davis of Llandyfaelog, the physician who delivered Queen Victoria. He attended the Royal Academy Schools in 1833 on the recommendation of E H Baily, in whose workshop he also trained. He first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1834, giving his address as 4 Fitzroy Street. Most of his known works of the following decade are portrait busts, and it is to be assumed that it was with this genre that he initially made his living. The Art Union commented on the bust of Francis Grant (45) that ‘The free and flowing manner of the hair of this head seems to be precisely “as the winds have left it”; and in the whole there is as much of poetic sentiment as may be risked in portraiture’ (AU, 1842, 128). The same journal was more equivocal in 1844, when Davis exhibited The Power of the Law (7) at Westminster Hall, a female figure with a chain. This was described as ‘heavy in character, coarse in execution...nothing beyond a sketch’ (AU, 1844, 217). The Literary Gazette was succinctly acid, when it remarked ‘Would that this gentleman had the power of doing something better’ (Lit Gaz 1844, 483).
Further adverse criticism greeted a major public work, the statue of the Duke of Rutland, 1850, for the City of Leicester. It was cast in bronze by a French firm and exhibited at the Great Exhibition (10). It was intended for a high pedestal and carved to be seen from below, but unfortunately it was shown at a low level and the exaggerated features elicited a jaundiced response. The Builder thought that the ‘strange, loose figure of the Duke’ was ‘unfortunately a failure… His Grace is made to appear positively intoxicated; and as we may expect, if it be put up without alteration, to find the old proverb of “as drunk as a lord” giving place in Leicester to “as drunk as a Duke” ’ (Builder 1851, 715). Once erected, however, the Leicester Journal encouraged all those who had only seen the work a yard above the ground to look at it in situ, where the effect of the ‘noble statue’ was ‘absolutely electrifying’ (Cavanagh 2000, 144).
Other important works included a statue of Sir William Nott for Davis’s home town of Carmarthen (9), where Davis had retained connections. In July 1846 The Welshman carried a report that Davies ‘a rising sculptor in the metropolis’, had offered a bust of the Bishop of St David’s to the City Corporation, who had accepted it (54) (Dale-Jones and Lloyd 1989, 48). Thirlwall went on to commission a monument to Bishop Richard Davies, a wall-tablet with a fine, angular relief of the seated cleric in his academic hat and robes (2).
He was also responsible for a statue of Josiah Wedgwood, erected by public subscription in Stoke. Wedgwood was depicted standing, bare-headed, holding the Portland vase in his left hand (14). Towards the end of his life he was commissioned by the Royal Academy to execute busts of the painters Daniel Maclise and John Constable (95, 99). He exhibited at the Academy until 1877, giving his address as 15 Fitzroy Street. He died on 14 August 1878.
Literary References: AJ 1864, 289-90; Graves 1905-6, 2, 259; Gunnis 1968, 122; Dale-Jones and Lloyd 1989, 48-9
Archival References: RA admissions