Details of Sculptor

Surname

Flaxman

Alternative Surname

First Name

John II RA

Initial of Surname

F

Year of Birth/Baptism

1755

Flourished

Year of Death

1826

Biographical Details

A sculptor, illustrator, designer and lecturer, Flaxman was the most widely-known British sculptor in the decades around 1800 and had a profound influence on British 19th-century sculpture. He was born in York on 6 July 1755, the second son of John Flaxman I and the younger brother of William Flaxman. His mother’s maiden name was Lee. Flaxman was born during one of his father’s working trips into the country, though the family settled in London soon afterwards. He learnt to draw and model in his father’s plaster shop, and, if his earliest biographers are to be believed, was a youthful prodigy, having learnt to read Latin whilst still a young boy. He is said to have received early encouragement from patrons of his father, such as the Reverend Anthony Stephen Matthews and his blue-stocking wife, Harriet, who held a salon in Rathbone Place, London and a Mr Crutchley of Sunninghill Park, who commissioned six chalk drawings from the young boy. The politician Frederick Montagu ordered one of Flaxman’s earliest recorded works of sculpture, The Death of Julius Caesar (313). In 1767, 1768 and 1769 Flaxman exhibited with the Free Society (237, 238, 266, 267), and in 1766 and1768 with its more prestigious rival, the Society of Artists (312, 313), where he won a premium in 1770 for his bust of David Garrick (239). The Gentleman’s Magazine later paid tribute to the young man’s erudition and skill, commenting ‘our societies bestowed rewards upon him at an age when other children are still in the nursery’ (GM, 1781, vol 51, 1781, 65).
In 1769 Flaxman entered the Royal Academy schools to study sculpture, won a silver medal for a Neptune (380) and exhibited at the academy exhibition of 1770. In 1771 he came to the attention of Josiah Wedgwood, who reported the opinion of an acquaintance, Mr Freeman, that ‘young Flaxman is a coxcomb but does not think him a bit the worse for it, or less likely to be a great Artist’ (Wedgwood Archives, quoted in Bindman 1979, 47). Flaxman later concurred with this judgement of his youthful character, owning that his conceit was only tempered by his failure to win the Royal Academy’s gold medal in 1772, when he lost to Thomas Engleheart. By 1775 Flaxman, like his father, had begun to model for Wedgwood, supplying wax models, initially portraits of modern worthies, for which he received modest single payments and, as was standard commercial practice, received no recognition as the designer (317, 318). Wedgwood chose Flaxman because his prices were cheaper than those of his principal rival Joachim Smith, and Flaxman was to prove a valuable employee. His later reliefs for Wedgwood, such as the Apotheosis of Homer (323), were taken from antique vases in Sir William Hamilton’s collection, published in D’Hancarville’s Collection of Etruscan… Antiquities (1766-7). Hamilton said of Flaxman’s work that he ‘never saw a bas-relief executed in the true simple antique style half so well’ (Wedgwood Archives, quoted in Bindman 1979, 47).
On 3 June 1781 Flaxman married Ann Denman, the daughter of a Whitechapel gunstock maker, at St Anne, Soho (parish registers, vol 17, 143), and about this time he left his father’s workshop in the Strand to set up home at 27 Wardour Street. Ann was ‘of a respectable family in London, not only an amiable, but a highly accomplished female’ (GM, 1827, 1, 273), and their marriage, although childless, was apparently very happy. Her enthusiastic letters, many of which survive, have proved an important source for historians of Flaxman’s career. His friends at this time included the painters William Blake and Thomas Stothard, with whom he shared a passion for medieval art and history, reflected in Flaxman’s early sketchbooks and also, on rare occasions, in his commissions for Wedgwood. The bishop in the set of chess pieces modelled in 1783 was apparently based on a figure on the exterior of Wells Cathedral (393). In addition to his many designs for Wedgwood, Flaxman also carved chimneypieces for Wedgwood’s home, Etruria Hall (296), and, together with his father and brother, works for Edward Knight, who was to prove a longstanding patron (296, 297, 309, 354, 360).
In 1780 Flaxman advertised his interest in executing funerary sculpture by providing a sketch for a monument to the poet Thomas Chatterton (1) and by the mid-1780s he had started to receive commissions in this field. A noteworthy early monument was ordered by the poet William Hayley, who had met Flaxman in 1783, for his father-in-law, Thomas Ball (12). Flaxman’s early monuments reflect several influences: the Ball is a graceful, oval-framed mourning scene reminiscent of Thomas Banks, whilst the monuments to Ann Russell (2) and Sarah Morley (10) are elaborate ascension scenes which have the theatricality of monuments by Louis François Roubiliac and Joseph Wilton. The presence in all these scenes of guiding angels (possibly modelled on those on the Temple of the Winds in Athens) also suggests he was influenced by Emanuel Swedenborg’s theological writings. Flaxman had joined the Theosophical Society founded to promote the theologian’s writings in 1784 and he later became a member of the Council of the Swedenborg Society, but he seems never to have left the established church.
In the autumn of 1787, with financial assistance from his parents-in-law, Flaxman and his wife left for Italy. They saw much of France and visited a number of northern Italian cities before arriving in Rome in December. Their surviving letters and the sculptor’s journals and sketchbooks provide a detailed record of the couple’s period abroad. In January 1788 Flaxman visited Naples, Herculaneum, Pompeii, Portici and Paestum. In March he was back in Rome where he rented the rooms in the Stalla Mignanelli, near the Piazza di Spagna, occupied by Thomas Banks a decade earlier.
Much of Flaxman’s time during his early years in Rome was spent in the study of old master paintings and sculpture and he received few commissions (273, 275, 360). Before leaving England he had made an informal arrangement with Wedgwood to supervise the work of John De Vaere in Rome, and when De Vaere completed his work for Wedgwood and returned to England in 1790, Flaxman also contemplated returning home. He extended his stay however when he received a commission for a marble group, The Fury of Athamas, from Frederick Hervey, Earl of Bristol, on the recommendation of Antonio Canova (246). The commission proved a mixed blessing. Flaxman was so delighted at the prospect of producing an ideal group that he accepted the derisory sum of £600, of which £550 was expended on marbles and workmen. Bristol was delighted with his bargain and declared that Flaxman ‘will probably rise to be the first sculptor in Europe’ (Childe-Pemberton 1925, vol 2, 438).
In 1791 the Flaxmans moved into rooms in the Strada Felice, where they existed on an income of about £120 a year. They had little social life but the sculptor was industrious, taking a course in anatomy in April 1792 and travelling to Orvieto to study the great renaissance cathedral in September. Late in 1792 he worked on a commission from Georgina Hare-Naylor, the scholarly daughter of the Bishop of Asaph, for a series of outline drawings illustrating Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey for which she paid 15/- a sheet. Flaxman intended these minimal, linear drawings to be studies for future bas-reliefs, in imitation of the antique sarcophagi which he admired. The reliefs never materialised. The drawings, which were engraved in 1793, received such widespread acclaim that they formed the basis for his European reputation. Thomas Hope, who ordered two groups from the sculptor (244, 247), also commissioned more than 100 drawings from Dante’s Divine Comedy (first published in a private edition for Thomas Hope in 1795). Another admirer of Flaxman’s graphic work, Countess Spencer, commissioned a series of drawings from the works of Aeschylus for which she paid a guinea a sheet (published in 1795). The illustrations were disseminated throughout Europe, attracting interest from the German writers Johann Wolfgang Goethe and August William von Schlegel. They were copied by art students in Denmark and France and subsequently influenced such artists as Francisco Goya, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Theodore Géricault and Gustave Moreau.
The proximity of French invading forces in 1794 persuaded Flaxman and other British artists and connoisseurs to return to England. The Flaxmans left Rome in June and stayed 5 weeks in Florence before journeying back via Carrara and Innsbruck. Farington noted Flaxman’s return, in the company of the painter Maria Cosway and ‘young Bartolozzi’ (presumably Gaetano) in November, adding that ‘Flaxman’s drawings and sculpture are highly spoken of’ (Farington, vol 1, 260). In London Flaxman was so appalled by the import taxes imposed on his own works that he lobbied for a relaxation of customs duties for artists. His success in this campaign led to a signed letter of thanks from artists in Rome, including Sir Richard Westmacott RA, Christopher Hewetson, John Deare and William Theed I.
Flaxman set up his home and studio at 7 Buckingham Street, off Fitzroy Square, a property which was rated at £36, with an adjacent workshop, rated at an additional £30 (Marylebone Rate Books, 1803-4/Reel 30, Westminster City Archives). He employed 6 men: an early assistant was James Smith, and an early apprentice, Thomas Hayley, whose father, William, continued to be an influential champion of Flaxman’s work. William Hayley was chiefly responsible for Flaxman’s selection as executant of monuments to the poet William Collins, a cavo-rilievo portrait (16), and to the scholar George Steevens in the form of a stele (59). Hayley also eulogised his friend in verse. Flaxman’s most notable commission of this period was the monument to the former Lord Chief Justice, William Mansfield, in Westminster Abbey (68). The design, apparently prepared by Flaxman and Sir William Hamilton, was for the first free-standing monument in the Abbey, and in its bold composition and limited ornament reflected the influence of Canova’s papal monuments.
Flaxman was responsible for two celebrated busts in the mid-1790s, of a Mr Udney (280), considered by Nathaniel Marchant to be ‘worthy of a place among the works of the Greeks’ (Farington, vol 2, 425) and of the Corsican patriot Pasquale di Paoli, who sat for his bust (281). Thenceforth the bulk of Flaxman’s practice was in church monuments, a choice made as much from conviction as necessity, since he believed that the purpose of art was the furtherance of Christian devotion. Flaxman’s post-Italian monuments tend to be uncluttered classicising works, making use of the stele form and key-fret or strigil decoration, often above pious dicta in bronzed lettering, such as ‘Go and do thou likewise’ (37) and ‘Blessed are they that mourn’ (44). The monument to Agnes Cromwell (49), a linear composition in gradated relief, is an apotheosis scene: the deceased is raised to heaven by three guiding angels. Below is the inscription ‘Come thou blessed’.
On 6 November 1797 Flaxman was elected an associate of the Royal Academy, defeating J C F Rossi in the second ballot. Initially his relationship with the Academy was not close. Thomas Banks commented that Flaxman had shown nothing at the exhibitions which ‘corresponded with the reputation he bore’ (Farington, vol 4, 1369) and Flaxman refused to attempt to ingratiate himself with the academicians. When he was elected a full academician in February 1800 Farington commented that this was because the sculptor was ‘too able to be objected to’ (Farington, vol 4, 1380). Flaxman took on the role of public commentator on sculptural issues, writing articles in the Morning Chronicle in 1796 and 1797. In 1799 he published a pamphlet, proposing the erection of a 230-foot high statue of Britannia in Greenwich Park to commemorate naval victories of the Napoleonic Wars, which would take ten years to erect and would cost around £70,000 (248). He wrote an essay on sculpture for Longman’s Encyclopaedia in 1803, and in 1805 offered to deliver a public address on the death of Thomas Banks, the sculptor whom he considered to have established a new standard in sculpture.
After the Peace of Amiens in 1802 Flaxman travelled to Paris to examine sculpture in the Louvre looted by the French in the recent wars. The renewal of hostilities in due course brought Flaxman new opportunities in the form of prestigious commissions for monuments in St Paul’s Cathedral to Admiral Nelson (202), Nelson’s flag-captain, Ralph Miller (105), and Admiral Howe (154). Flaxman’s skills were not best exhibited in these triumphalist works, which have none of the grace of his contemporaneous relief monuments to the scholars Joseph Warton (97), which depicts him teaching pupils at Westminster School, or to Abraham Balme, who is also shown instructing the ignorant (162).
Despite his celebrity, Flaxman does not seem to have amassed a great fortune. He inherited nothing but a ring from his father, who died in 1803 and he had no instinct for business. Although he regularly reinterpreted old designs for new monuments, for instance the inscription tablet flanked by a Christian Virtue, probably first used on the monument to Sir Simon Clarke (52), and adapted on at least 7 occasions, he never developed the profitable recycling techniques of John Bacon RA or his son. Throughout his life he produced designs for manufacturers, including the Royal Goldsmiths, Rundell, Bridge and Rundell, for whom he designed the Trafalgar Vase, the National Cup, and the Shield of Achilles (404), together with designs for cups and candelabra.
Flaxman was always busy: in 1808 he told Farington that he had ‘work in hand that would employ him near seven years’ (Farington, vol 9, 3328-9). In 1809 he was commissioned to design a series of reliefs for Covent Garden Theatre and provided rhythmic processions of draped figures representing Ancient and Modern Drama (311). These were executed in stone by JCF Rossi, who commented with some truth that Flaxman had little power ‘in working upon marble and stone. His power is confined to designing and modelling’ (Farington, vol 10, 3513-4, 3529). Apart from his attention to important details, Flaxman appears to have played little part in the carving of his works, which were transposed from half-size models and carved by his assistants. This accounts in part for the contemporary perception, hinted at by Canova, that Flaxman’s execution was ‘not equal to his imagination and taste’ (Farington, vol 12, 4746).
In 1810 Flaxman was appointed the first professor of sculpture at the Royal Academy, with a stipend of £60 a year. His duties entailed the delivery of six annual lectures, the first series of public lectures on sculpture delivered by a British artist. Sir Joshua Reynolds, whose monument in St Paul’s Cathedral was provided by Flaxman (174), had delivered only one discourse on sculpture, which Flaxman regarded in part as ‘nonsense’ (ibid, vol 5, 1980). Flaxman took his lectures seriously, placing the practice of sculpture within an expansive historical framework and in August 1812 he embarked on a study trip from Waltham to York to gather material and make drawings for his lectures. In 1813 he was also asked to give two at the Royal Institution. Flaxman’s gravity of manner, though admired by some, was felt by others to be stultifying: Fuseli described the RA lectures as the ‘sermons’ of ‘Reverend Flaxman’ (Cunningham 1829-33, vol 3, 339).
At the close of the wars in 1815 Flaxman was once again in Paris, and in 1816 he gave the most extensive evidence of any artist to the Elgin Marbles Committee. In September 1816, through the intervention of Canova, he was elected a member of the Accademia di San Luca in Rome. He continued to receive a steady stream of commissions, not only for privately commissioned British funerary monuments, which sometimes included Gothic decoration, but also for public statues in marble and bronze for the city of Glasgow (251, 252), statues and monuments for export to India and a large monument for the East India Company (187). Flaxman also received commissions for two ideal works, the Pastoral Apollo and Satan overcome by St Michael (255, 259), from an enlightened patron, the 3rd Earl of Egremont. These appear to have been the first commissions for poetic works received by Flaxman since the 1790s, and he altered his working practice for the St Michael, producing a full-size model and as a result, a far more vivid and well-proportioned composition. Cunningham described it as ‘a work of the highest merit – the conception is epic – the grouping grand, and the action godlike’ (Cunningham 1829-33, vol 3, 355).
In 1820, the year Flaxman failed in his candidacy for presidency of the Royal Academy, his wife died, and was noted as an ‘excellent Greek scholar’ in her obituary (GM, vol 80, part 1, 281). Flaxman was subsequently cared for by his half sister, Mary Ann Flaxman, and his sister-in-law, Maria Denman, who moved into Buckingham Street. In 1822 he delivered an address on the death of Antonio Canova, with whom he was frequently compared, although the press recorded the general opinion that the two belonged in separate spheres: ‘Canova excelling more in the exquisite delicacies of the human figure, and Flaxman in general and extensive composition of figures’ (GM, 1827, vol 98, part 1, 275). Although Flaxman’s studio continued to produce monuments in the 1820s, the sculptor’s powers were diminishing. The architect C R Cockerell called on Flaxman in March 1825 and found him ‘very feeble & slow. his lamp is expiring – little fruit can be expected from so old a stock however golden in his former productions – his religious learned & contemplative mind is too little of this world to feel powerfully the attractions of art & this will still diminish as he draws higher to the object of his thought’ (Diaries, RIBA Library, quoted in Bindman 1979, 33). His last commission, to design decoration for the new Buckingham Palace, came from John Nash in 1826 and Flaxman did not live to complete the work. He contracted a severe cold and died on 7 December. He was buried by his wish after a private service on 15 December, next to his wife in St Giles-in-the-Fields burial ground, with an inscription honouring his ‘angelic spirit.’
Flaxman left all his possessions including his collection of art, his books and his furniture, to Mary Ann Flaxman and Maria Denman with his ‘living and dying benediction on their exemplary conduct and affectionate sisterly and disinterested tone and attention on all occasions’. He also arranged for money to be given to his female servants from the sale of his stocks of marble and utensils. The Gentleman’s Magazine noted in a lengthy obituary that Flaxman ‘was a man of warm benevolence and rigid integrity. In all pecuniary matters, he was so severely scrupulous against his own interest, that his profession was far less productive to him than most artists enjoying equal rank’ (GM, vol 98, part 1, 276). His estate was valued at only £3,314 4s 8d. Remaining works in his studio, including the memorials to Kemble and Robert Burns (232, 258), were completed by his brother-in-law, Thomas Denman, and Flaxman’s favourite assistant, John Ely Hinchliff. Another pupil, E H Baily, who was probably Flaxman’s most notable protégé, may have completed other works.
Flaxman was remembered by his contemporaries as a small, thin, hunched man, possibly the result of an illness that forced him to walk on crutches as a boy. His features were irregular, although softened by a sweet smile and animated by large and intelligent eyes. He was profoundly pious and serious, although possessed of a great deal of humility. He dressed plainly, had no coach or livery, took his meals at unsociable hours, and never attended parties. Although all attested to his mildness of manner and generosity of spirit, his aloofness caused one unnamed Academician to conclude that Flaxman ‘lived as if he did not belong to this world; his ways were not our ways’ (Builder, 1863, 37).
Commentators, including Sir Richard Westmacott, who delivered an address to the Royal Academy on Flaxman’s death, were in no doubt that Britain had lost its finest modern sculptor. Cunningham’s highly influential account of Flaxman’s life and work appeared in his Lives (1829-33). Flaxman’s lectures were published in 1829, bringing his scholarship to a wider audience, and a second, extended edition of the lectures appeared in 1838. In 1848 Maria Denman gave University College, London a collection of 120 original models by the sculptor, which were housed in 1857 in their ‘Flaxman Gallery.’ In view of the importance which the sculptor placed on the modelling process, this collection probably represents the finest surviving testament to Flaxman’s creative powers. The Royal Academy honoured him with a plaque in St Pancras church and also with a statue on the façade of Burlington House by Henry Weekes.
Although the celebrated Victorian image of Flaxman as the pious Fra Angelico of sculpture has fallen out of favour, his reputation as a sculptor has been sustained as a result of the growing post-war interest in neoclassicism and through the rigorous scholarship of Croft-Murray, Gunnis and Whinney. Attention has chiefly been focussed on his monumental sculpture, still admired for its combination of classicism and clarity of religious expression, but modern scholarship has begun to take account of his importance as an industrial designer for ceramics and silverwork. His reputation as an illustrator with an international reputation has remained constant. The full range of Flaxman’s talents was displayed in an exhibition held in Hamburg and London in 1979, and in a monograph by David Irwin in the same year.
MGS
Literary References: Farington, passim; Monthly Mag, 1802, 362; Cunningham 1829-33, vol 3, 274-367; AU, Jan 1842, 13; Constable 1927; Flaxman Account Book, 1794-1810; Irwin 1959 (1), 212-17; Hutchison 1960-62, 134; Oman 1966, 174-82; Gunnis and Whinney 1967; Gunnis 1968, 147-151; JKB 1973 (3), 1640-1; Pyke 1973, 48-9; K-Browne 1977 (2), 367-73; Penny 1977 (1), passim; Bindman 1979; Irwin 1979; Read 1982, passim; Whinney 1988, passim; Groseclose 1995, passim; Ingamells 1997, 361-4; Grove 1996, 162-4 (Bindman); Bold 2000, 33, 251 n121; Bindman 2003; Bilbey 2002, 76-84; McAllister 2014, 38-42; Marchand 2017, 309-20
Archival References: Parish register of St Anne, Soho, vol 17, 143; Flaxman Papers, BM Ad MS 39791, fol 28, fol 48, fols 103-4, f167; John Flaxman papers, Univ of California, Bancroft Library, BANC MSS 76/94z, including letters to Prince Hoare and others; see also list of MS sources in Irwin 1979, 233-4; Dorey 2004, 57-70
Wills: John Flaxman I, 9 April 1803 (PROB 11/1390, 225-6); John Flaxman RA, 17 January 1827 (PROB 11/1720, 129)
Collections of Drawings: Album of designs for tombs and monuments, Tate T10823-90, T11724-5, T11732-3, designs for monuments T10178-241, T11663-9, design for a monument to Alderman Beckford T08461; two Roman sketchbooks, VAM, one of 71pp exhaustively analyzed in Whinney 1956, 269-82, the other of 170pp, with studies of figures and monuments, Bindman 1979, 78, 80-3 (repr); copies of Flaxman’s drawings for Rundell, Bridge and Rundell, marked Designs for Plate by John Flaxman etc, VAM, Oman 1966, 174-82; Italian sketchbook, YCBA (Ingamells 1997, 362)
Miscellaneous drawings (sculpture only): several, including unrealised designs for Buckingham Palace, HMI/Leeds City Art Gallery (Friedman 1993, 91, cat 27, repr, and Leeds 1999, 16-18); several, including four for pediment sculpture at Buckingham Palace, Royal coll, RL 23228-31291; portrait of Flaxman’s polisher, John Burge, pencil, Mus Fine Arts, Boston; portrait of Sarti, pencil, Mus Fine Arts, Boston; study for a monument, c1813, BM; study for a triumphal arch surmounted by a figure of Britannia, 1799, pen, ink and pencil, Art Museum, Princeton (Irwin 1979, 165, repr); study for a monument to John Howard, pen and wash, c1800, Hamburg, Kunsthalle (Bindman 1979, 117, repr); reconstruction of the west pediment of the Parthenon, c1802, pen, ink and wash, BM (Irwin 1979, 174, repr); design for The modern Drama, untraced, payment of 10 gns received in September 1809 (Flaxman Account Book 1809-26, 8, Gunnis and Whinney 1967, 60-1); design for unidentified monument, VAM 8970K; design for a chimneypiece (inscribed ‘Sky light room’), pen and wash, VAM (Bindman 1979, 46, repr); designs for chimneypieces, sold Christie 24 March 1982, lots 106 and 107; drawings of sculpture to illustrate lectures, pen and wash, Hamburg, Kunsthalle (Bindman 1979, 133-4, repr); design for a Victory medal, 1802 or 1815, pen and wash, UCL (Bindman 1979, 136, repr); design for a prize medal of the Lyceum Medicum, London, 1785, VAM (Bindman 1979, 136, repr); designs for both sides of a Royal Academy medal, 1819, pencil and wash, RA; design for a naval medal of George III, pen and wash, VAM; design for roundel of Hypnos, pen, ink, pencil and wash, BM (Bindman 1979, 138, repr); study for a candelabrum with a hussar on top, c1805-15, pen and wash, VAM (Bindman 1979, 149, repr); sketch for a centrepiece presented to Sir Arthur Wellesley, c1810, pencil, pen and ink, VAM (Bindman 1979, 149, repr); design for a candelabrum, c1809, pen and wash, BM (Bindman 1979, 149, repr); studies for silverware, pen and wash, BM (Bindman 1979, 151, repr); sketchbooks from the sculpture tour of 1812 (Irwin 1979, 204); mythological designs for Rundell, Bridge and Rundell, 1824, BM, VAM, Huntington, Met Mus NY (Bindman 1979, 151, repr); designs for Buckingham Palace, London, 1826, pencil, BM, Huntington (Irwin 1979, 176-7, repr); Mercury presenting Bacchus to the Nymphs, design for a candelabrum, pen, wash and pencil, Huntington (Irwin 1979, 193, repr); design for the National Cup, pencil and wash, 1824, Royal Coll (Physick 1969, 170-1, repr)
Auction Catalogues: Flaxman 1828 (1); Flaxman 1828 (2)
Portraits of the Sculptor: Self-portrait 1778-9, pen and wash, Earls High School, Halesowen (Bindman 1979, 38, repr); self-portrait 1779, pen with flesh tinting, UCL 616 (Bindman 1979, 38, repr); self-portrait, 1790, NPG 2487; Guy Head, 1792, oil on canvas, NPG 823 (Irwin 1979, 51, repr); Archibald Skirving, 1791, pastel, YCAG (Burl 1993, 897, repr); George Romney, Flaxman modelling the bust of William Hayley, 1795, oil on canvas, YCBA (version or possibly a study for the final work, NPG, 101), Magreta 2007, 58-66 (repr); Henry Howard, c1797, oil on panel, NPG 674; Thomas Cooley, 1810, pencil, NPG 4913b; George Cruikshank The Antiquarian Society, 1812, etching with caricature of Flaxman holding a bible (Irwin 1979, 123, repr); James Atkinson, 1826, pencil, ink and wash, NPG 823; E H Baily, marble bust, 1826, RA, London; David d’Angers, medallion portrait for a medal, Galerie David et Museé d’Angers (Bindman 1979, 139, repr); E H Baily, medallion portrait for a bronze coin, BM (Bindman 1979, 139, repr); Henry Weigall, medallion-portrait for a bronze coin, Fitz (Bindman 1979, 140, repr); Henry Weekes, Flaxman leaning on Homer’s Head, statue, 1873-4, Royal Academy, façade; John Thomas Smith, watercolour, nd, BM, P&D, 1885,0509.1574; William Young Ottley, sketch, nd, BM, P&D, 1885, 0509.1575