Details of Sculptor

Surname

Fillans

Alternative Surname

First Name

James

Initial of Surname

F

Year of Birth/Baptism

1808

Flourished

Year of Death

1852

Biographical Details

Although Fillans spent many years in London, his success as a portrait sculptor depended almost entirely on Scottish patronage. He was born on 27 March 1808 at Wilsontown, near Lanark, the third-born but eldest surviving son of John Thomson Fillans and his wife Jean, née White. He was educated at the local parish school until about 1816 when his family moved to Busby, where Fillans worked with his father on the land. He was employed as a print assistant at the Busby calico printing works for about five years but when the family moved to Paisley he was apprenticed, apparently against his will, to a hand-loom weaver. During this period he spent much of his leisure time sketching and making models in wood, metal and clay.
His career as a sculptor began at the age of 17, when he was apprenticed to a Paisley stonemason, Hall McLatchie. After his master’s death Fillans spent several years working as journeyman stonemason in Paisley, Greenock and Glasgow, where he carved capitals for the Royal Exchange (64). In about 1830 he opened his own studio in Paisley and began to model profile portraits, reliefs and statuettes for David Dick, a local bookseller who marketed copies of them in wax and plaster. His groups of Watty and Meg and of a well-known local character Jamie Gemmell borne along by two policemen were especially popular (9, 7). These were followed by a bust of Sheriff Campbell (22) which ‘added vastly to the growing reputation of the artist, and brought him encouraging supplies of cash, as well as orders’ (Paterson 1854, 24). He secured commissions from Glasgow patrons and in the early 1830s moved to Glasgow. There he set up a studio in Miller Street, employing his brothers, Robert and John Fillans, as assistants, and he attended Mr Warren’s drawing classes. On 16 April 1833 he married Grace, the daughter of John Gemmell, a Paisley manufacturer.
Two years later, with financial assistance from his friend and patron James Walkinshaw, Fillans travelled to Paris, where he made a number of drawings from paintings in the Louvre. On his return he settled in London, establishing a studio at 5 High Holborn in 1836. He moved to 12 South Bank, Regent’s Park, in 1838 and then to 82 Baker Street in 1840. He soon made the acquaintance of Allan Cunningham, whose bust he exhibited in 1837 (25). It was probably Cunningham who introduced Fillans to Sir Francis Chantrey, whose recommendation helped secure him the commission for a bust of Richard Oswald, the owner of the Auchincruive estate in Ayrshire (40). Since the sitter was in Italy, Fillans travelled to Florence to model the work. He remained there for several months in 1841 and again visited Paris before returning to London. Fillans exhibited at the Royal Academy throughout this period, showing 25 works between 1837 and 1850.
Although his principal studio was in London Fillans maintained strong links with Scotland. Many of his commissions came from patrons on the west coast and he spent much of his time in Glasgow and Paisley, modelling portrait busts. His most important work was a statue commemorating Sir James Shaw, Provost of Kilmarnock, erected in Kilmarnock in 1848 (16). After the ceremony Fillans was the guest of honour at a public banquet at which ‘homage was rendered to him by all the leading persons of the town and neighbourhood’ (AJ, 1848, 314). The sculptor was elected an Academician of the West of Scotland Academy in 1841 and he exhibited there in 1842, 1847, 1849 and 1852. Since Fillans spent an increasing amount of time in Scotland his London residence became an unnecessary financial burden and in 1850 he finally moved back to Glasgow, where he worked from a studio in St Vincent Street. There he started work on a series of reliefs entitled Taming the wild horse, which were apparently inspired by a book about Texas (78), and he modelled a statuette of The flying Dutchman, a celebrated race horse belonging to the Earl of Eglinton (18). He also carved a monument commemorating William Motherwell, which included reliefs illustrating some of the poet’s works a well as a portrait bust (6).
Two years later, on 27 September 1852, Fillans died of rheumatic fever and was buried in the family plot at Woodside Cemetery, Paisley. A crouching figure Grief, or Rachel weeping for her children, which he had designed as a monument to his father, was carved by John Mossman and placed over his own grave (17). A sale of the sculptor’s remaining works and studio equipment, held in St Vincent Street on 16 March 1852, ‘did not realise as much as might have been expected’ (Paterson 1854, 108). One of the sculptor’s daughters, Wilhelmina Fillans, exhibited sculpture at the Royal Scottish Academy in 1869 and 1871.
EH
Literary References: AJ, 1852, 350; Paterson 1854; Athenaeum, 1854, 1371-2; Gunnis 1968, 144; Pyke 1973, 47; Woodward 1977, vol 1, pt 2, 65-8; Pearson 1991, 91-2
Archival References: IGI
Portraits of the Sculptor: David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, James Fillans with his two daughters, calotype, 1843-8, NPG P6(120); Paterson 1854, frontispiece