Francis Leggatt Chantrey

Sir Francis Leggatt Chantrey RA was an English sculptor. He became the leading portrait sculptor in Regency era Britain, producing busts and statues of many notable figures of the time. Chantrey's most notable works include the statues of King George IV (Trafalgar Square); King George III (Guildhall), and George Washington (Massachusetts State House). He also executed four monuments to military heroes for St Paul's Cathedral, London. He left the Chantrey Bequest (or Chantrey Fund) for the purchase of works of art for the nation, which was available from 1878 after the death of his widow.

Life
Chantrey was born at Jordanthorpe near Norton (then a Derbyshire village, now a suburb of Sheffield), where his family had a small farm.

His father, who also dabbled in carpentry and wood-carving, died when Francis was twelve; and his mother remarried, leaving him without a clear career to follow. At fifteen, he was working for a grocer in Sheffield, when, having seen some wood-carving in a shop-window, he asked to be apprenticed as a carver instead, and was placed with a woodcarver and gilder called Ramsay in Sheffield.

At Ramsay's house he met the draughtsman and engraver John Raphael Smith who recognised his artistic potential and gave him lessons in painting, and was later to help advance his career by introducing him to potential patrons.

In 1802, Chantrey paid £50 to buy himself out of his apprenticeship with Ramsay and immediately set up a studio as a portrait artist in Sheffield, which allowed him a reasonable income.

For several years he divided his time between Sheffield and London, studying intermittently at the Royal Academy Schools. In the summer of 1802, he travelled to Dublin, where he fell very ill, losing all his hair. He exhibited pictures at the Royal Academy for a few years from 1804, but from 1807 onwards devoted himself mainly to sculpture.

Asked later in life, as a witness in a court case, whether he had ever worked for any other sculptors, he replied: "No, and what is more, I never had an hour's instruction from any sculptor in my life".

His first recorded marble bust was one of the Rev. James Wilkinson (1805-06), for Sheffield parish church. His first imaginative sculpture, a head of Satan was shown at the Royal Academy in 1808.

In 1809, the architect Daniel Asher Alexander commissioned him to make four monumental plaster busts of the admirals Adam Duncan, 1st Viscount Duncan, Richard Howe, Earl Howe, John Jervis, 1st Earl of St Vincent and Horatio Nelson for the Royal Naval Asylum at Greenwich, for which he received £10 each. Three of them were shown at the Royal Academy that year.

On 23 November 1809, he married his cousin, Mary Ann Wale at St Mary's Church, Twickenham. By this time he was settled permanently in London, His wife brought £10,000 into the marriage, which allowed Chantrey to pay off his debts, and for the couple to move into a house at 13 Eccleston Street, Pimlico, (recorded as Chantrey's address in the Royal Academy catalogues from 1810). He also bought land to build two more houses, a studio and offices. In 1811, he showed six busts in the Royal Academy.

The subjects included John Horne Tooke and Sir Francis Burdett, two political figures he greatly admired; his early mentor John Raphael Smith, and Benjamin West. Joseph Nollekens placed the bust of Tooke between two of his own, and the prominence given to it is said to have had a significant influence on Chantrey's career. In the wake of the exhibition he received commissions amounting to £12,000. In 1813 he was able to raise his price for a bust to a hundred and fifty guineas, and in 1822 to two hundred.

He visited Paris in 1814, and again in 1815, this time with his wife, Thomas Stothard, and D. A. Alexander, visiting the Louvre where he especially admired the works of Raphael and Titian. In 1819 he went to Italy, accompanied by the painter John Jackson, and an old friend named Read. In Rome he met Bertel Thorvaldsen and Antonio Canova, getting to know the latter especially well.

In 1828 Chantrey set up his own foundry in Eccleston Place, not far from his house and studio, where large-scale works in bronze, including equestrian statues, could be cast.

Text courtesy of Wikipedia, 2025