This post is basically rough notes on the Carter Family of Sculptors.
I will return to the subject as I collate more information.
A Mid 18th Century Marble Bust.
Attributed to - Thomas Carter II, (1729? -1795).
...............
See my notes on Thomas Carter II below.
The dates don't tally for this bust being created in 1740.
There are no other busts by Carter recorded in the Biographical Dictionary of Sculptors in Britain pub. Yale 2009.
circa 1740..
........................
This portrait bust, traditionally understood to be the architect William Adam (1689-1748), showing a man in an open necked shirt with buttoned coat beneath drapery, furrowed brow, long pointed nose and thin downturned lips.
Inscribed on the back ''Sir Isaac Newton/ By Roubiliac',
It does not resemble Roubiliac's or any other sculptors bust of Newton.
55 cm (21 1/2 in), on a turned socle, total height approx. 67 cm (26 1/4 in), a few small nicks to edges of drapery and elsewhere,
https://www.forumauctions.co.uk/component/com_bidding/id,138934/layout,details/view,timed/
The use of the turned socle is not usual in a bust as early 1740 suggesting to me that the busts is either later or more likely that the socle has been replaced.
Here is my previous post regarding William Adam.
https://bathartandarchitecture.blogspot.com/2021/05/william-adam-attributed-to-henry-cheere.html
National Galleries of Scotland.
Image below from Robert Adam and his brothers .... John Swarbrick, 1915.
....................
For a reasonable short biog see -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Adam_(architect)
William Adam
by Akeman (1682 - 1731)
c. 1723
.................................
Thomas Carter I.
The executor of his will was John Cheere.
info here cut and pasted from
He founded a major London workshop, one of the first to specialise in elaborate marble chimneypieces. Carter was born on 2 May 1702 in Datchet, Bucks, the son of Thomas and Anne Carter.
The unsigned monument with a
portrait medallion to Thomas Carter Senior (†1726) in Datchet seems likely to
be a tribute carved by the Carter children for their father. The family was of
well-established yeoman stock, but Thomas, his brother Benjamin Carter, and his
nephew Thomas Carter II, all pursued successful careers as sculptors in London.
A colourful vignette published in the European Magazine (vol
II, 178) a century after his birth, described Carter’s first premises as ‘a
shed near the chapel in Mayfair’ where he scratched a living for himself, his
wife and his child, pursuing ‘the lower branches of his profession, such as
tomb-stones, grave-slabs, &c.’ and labouring ‘from the rising until the
setting of the sun.’ The author, Joseph Moser, who as a young man met Carter,
wrote that the sculptor’s luck had changed when a near-neighbour, Charles
Jervas, Principal Painter to the King, noticed his work and lent Carter
(depicted as an industrious but incredulous simpleton) £100 to buy materials
and hire an assistant. However fanciful the anecdote, it is possible that
Jervas, a keen collector of sculpture, provided early contacts, for one of
Carter’s major commissions was the monument to William Conolly, Speaker of the
Irish Parliament, and his wife, both patrons of Jervas (6). This is a
remarkably assured early work, with two full length reclining effigies in a
towering architectural setting. Catherine Conolly, who holds a book, is on a
slightly raised platform behind her husband and leans on her hand to look down
at him. The Dublin Gazette recorded the work’s completion on 17-19 August 1736
– ‘On Friday last two curious fine monuments, lately finished by Mr Carter near
Hyde Park Corner, was put on board a ship in the river in order to be carried
to Ireland’ (Potterton 1975, 39).
In 1734 Carter moved into a yard rated at £12 annually on Portugal Row. The Carter workshop stood here for over fifty years. His immediate neighbour was Thomas Manning, the lead ornament manufacturer, and the lead workshops of Andrew Carpenter and Catherine Nost were nearby.
In the 1730s
it appears that Carter found employment as a carver on development projects. He
worked under the architect John Wilkins on the building of 13-17 Queen Street,
Soho in 1733, and under Isaac Ware and Charles Carne involved in the rebuilding
of William Pulteney's houses on Chandos Place in 1737 (29). Most of Carter’s
signed or documented monuments also date from the 1730s, and include
wall-tablets with portrait medallions commemorating Mary Carew (1) and William
Arnold (3), and the memorial with two busts to Sir Cecil Wray, Churchwarden of
St George, Hanover Square, and his wife (5).
The full sized reclining figures of Colonel Thomas Moore, in
Roman armour (4), and the muscular Sir Henry Every (2) both demonstrate
Carter’s skill and show a sensitivity to the work of foreign masters in London.
Moore’s effigy was modelled on a canvas portrait in his family’s possession,
lent ‘to Mr. Carter, the stonemason, who is making a monument’ (Bodl MS North
Archives, b.14, fol 19). The effigy is reminiscent of Michael Rysbrack’s
monument to Lord Stanhope in Westminster Abbey. The Every memorial was erected
by his widow, Anne, Lady Guise, whose family was well-satisfied with the
results. In a letter of 1734 written by Sir Simon Every to his sister-in-law,
he expressed ‘most humble thanks for ye beautiful monument you have given my
brother’ (Every/Guise). The full extent of the monument’s beauty can no longer
be appreciated, since the impressive effigy is all that has survived the
Victorian restoration of the church.
In the 1740s the Carter workshop began to specialise increasingly in chimneypieces. These were often elaborate, incorporating polychrome marbles, reliefs of literary subjects, classically-derived telamonic figures and carving of the highest quality.
They must have been marketed in
keen competition with the rich, multi-coloured confections on offer from Henry
Cheere. For the Great Apartments at Holkham Hall, Carter and another London
neighbour, Joseph Pickford, provided architectural chimneypieces ‘for the most
part copied from Inigo Jones’s works’ (Brettingham 1773, ix). In other rooms
Carter used colourful Sicilian and Sienese marbles as grounds for reliefs of
subjects after the Antique, taken from engravings in Montfaucon’s influential
L’Antiquité Expliquée, 1719 (19, 23). Sir Matthew Featherstonehaugh of Uppark
paid Carter nearly £1000 between 1747 and 1756 for fireplaces decorated with
caryatid figures of classical philosophers and tablets representing Androcles
and the Lion and Romulus and Remus (the former relief employed also at Saltram
and perhaps elsewhere) (22). Carter used the novel ‘gothic’ style, a
fashionable alternative to tired classical ornaments, for chimneypieces at
Welbeck Abbey (11) and Bolsover Castle (13). The style had recently been explored
by William Kent for interiors at Rousham, by the antiquarian James West at his
London home and by the architect Sanderson Millar at Belhus. Carter supplied
fireplaces for all these sites (8, 12, 17). A clue to the associations attached
to the style comes from the Countess of Oxford’s proud description of Carter’s
‘Gothic chimneypiece’ for Welbeck (11). This was ‘designed partly from a fine
one at Bolsover, but composed of great variety of English, Scotch and Irish
marbles and alabaster, and not one bit of foreign in it’ (Turberville 1938,
394).
In 1741 Carter extended his premises in Portugal Row and was now liable for £16 in annual rates. By that date he clearly presided over an extensive business. In a letter to Lady Oxford’s agent, Thompson, in 1746, Carter boasted that ‘I have more than forty men under me and, thank God, without any disturbance in the least’ (Portland Archives quoted by Gunnis 1968, 84-5).) and numerous names of assistants appear in the house accounts. William Kay and [John?] Wildsmith, whose mutual animosity at Welbeck prompted the letter to Lady Oxford, were two of his best masons and Thomas Ker, another mason, with John Baker, a polisher, stayed at Blair Castle for 4 months whilst 9 chimneypieces were installed (Atholl Accounts) (16). Kay travelled between Welbeck and Okeover to set up chimneypieces, supported by Leak Okeover, who paid both his travelling and living expenses (Carter/Okeover MS).
The
extravagant owner of Okeover Hall paid Carter £98 for a chimneypiece in 1743
(10), and a bill for an unidentified mason sent out by Carter made allowance
for maintenance over 176 days, which amounted only to £28 12s. In 1746-9 a
mason worked at Okeover for 679 days, charged at £113 5s. Whilst relying on a
large number of employees, Carter continued to control workshop production and
to provide designs. In 1746, he informed Kay that he had sent Lady Oxford ‘a
drawing of a Gothick chimney-piece’ (Carter I/Kay), which may be the surviving
drawing in the Welbeck Archives.
At Okeover Carter acted as a supplier of sculpture from another neighbour in Piccadilly, John Cheere.
The accounts show that £8, with 18s for casing, was paid for ‘work done by order of Mr Carter per John Cheere. To making a statue of a black’ (Oswald 1964, 175). In addition to the Blackamoor, which arrived in 1741, it is possible that ‘two spinx’, supplied by Carter in 1740, also came from Cheere’s workshop.
The most prestigious name
associated with the Carter workshop is Louis Francois Roubiliac, who, according
to the painter James Northcote, was ‘working as a journeyman for a person of
the name of Carter’ in or around 1752 (Northcote 1813, 29). Roubiliac had an
independent workshop by this date, but may have assisted Carter or worked in
sub-contract. Roubiliac later owned a bust of ‘Mr Carter, Statuary,’ although
this could be by Benjamin rather than Thomas I.
From 1751 Carter’s much younger brother Benjamin was rated on the property next door to the Piccadilly yard and it seems likely that Benjamin and Thomas had some kind of working relationship, though perhaps not of a formal nature.
The rateable value of Thomas Carter’s principal yard had
risen to £24 in 1756, suggesting that the last few years of his professional
life were the most prosperous. In the years 1751-6, for instance, Carter
supplied nine chimneypieces to Blair Castle at a cost of £606 16s 7d (16,21),
as well as fulfilling the extensive contracts at Holkham and Uppark.
He died in 1756 and was buried at Datchet, Bucks, where a grave-slab commemorates him and two of his children. A notice in the European Magazine of 1803 stated that he was then a very rich man, with a handsome house in Halfmoon Street, Piccadilly.
In his will, proved on 3 September, he divided his estate between his wife, Mary (who inherited all his household goods), his daughter Ann, a minor, and another daughter, Elizabeth, described as ‘the wife of my nephew,’ Thomas Carter II.
He asked to be buried in the family vault at Datchet, with the remains of his deceased children. To his brother Joseph he left £50, and to his brother, Benjamin, the workshops, lease of his house, working utensils and ‘all the drawing, models, marble and Portland stone.’
His executors were his neighbour John Cheere, and the master-builder and carpenter, John Phillips of Brook Street. Cheere and Phillips certified Carter’s bank account at Drummonds from June 1756 (Carter I Bank Account).
After his death
outstanding payments from the Duke of Atholl for 8 chimneypieces were made to
his widow.
Carter is chiefly remembered as the one time employer of
Roubiliac, although Moser’s anecdote suggests that Carter’s own tale of success
was considered noteworthy nearly fifty years after his death. Moser also
suggested that Carter benefited from the new fashion for rich architectural
decoration, ‘previously very sparingly introduced’. He clearly ran a profitable
business providing elegant focal points for the grand rooms of fashionable
houses.
MGS
Literary References: Brettingham 1773, passim; Moser 1803,
178-9; Northcote 1813, 29; Turberville 1938, 394; Gunnis 1958, 334; Gunnis 1959
(1), 72; Gunnis 1963, 1174-6; Oswald 1964, 175; S of ., vol 33 (1966), 166; vol
36 (1970), 264; Gunnis 1968, 84-5; Potterton 1975, 39; Guinness 1981, 896-905;
Whinney 1988, passim; Bindman and Baker 1995, 48, 214, 373; Baker 2000, passim;
Craske 2007, passim
Archival References: Datchet parish registers ; IGI; Poor
Rates St George, Hanover Square, WCA C120-1 (1734), C240 (1751), C297 (1756);
Carter/Okeover MS; Atholl Accounts; Carter I/Kay; Carter I Bank Account; GPC
Will: PROB 11/824 f313-5
Miscellaneous Drawings: Projections and design for a
chimneypiece in the Pillar Parlour at Bolsover, pen, ink and wash, Welbeck
Abbey 010720 (Turberville 1938, 397). On loan RIBA library
Portraits of the Sculptor: ‘Mr Carter, Statuary,’ bust,
plaster, untraced. Roubiliac’s sale, 12 May 1762, lot 12 (Bindman and Baker
1995, 364)
..................
Benjamin Carter (1719 - 66)
By his son John Carter after R Pyle.
1768.
British Museum acquired from Leggatt Bros in 1908.
Apart from the small bust in his hand, all the sculptural
objects in this watercolour were not in the original oil and were added by John
Carter to make his father appear in to be in his studio.
A sketch by Carter for this watercolour is in his notebooks
at KCL (Leathes 7/4, I, fol.9) and is reproduced in Bernard Nurse's extensive
article on Carter, published after the BM catalogue entry was written:
Bernard Nurse, 'John Carter, FSA: The Ingenious and very accurate draughtsman',
The Antiquaries Journal, 91, 2011, pp. 211-52 (based on papers and
correspondence in King's College London archives), see fig. 2, p. 214.
The Information below cut and pasted from
He was the younger brother of Thomas Carter I and the uncle of Thomas Carter II, with whom he worked in partnership, 1756-66.
He was christened in Datchet, Bucks, on 8 July 1719. Nothing is known of his training or early career, except that he supplied chimneypieces for Longford Castle, Wilts, in 1739 (4).
He appears to have worked with Thomas I from 1751 until his
brother’s death in 1756 and was rated on a property next door in Piccadilly.
Thomas I clearly considered Benjamin competent enough to take over the
business, because under the terms of his will he left his brother all the
‘working shops’ and utensils, and the lease of his house, rated at £24.
Benjamin was also given the option to buy ‘all the drawings, models, marble and
Portland stone’. Benjamin seems to have wasted little time in consolidating his
position. By 28 September 1756, he had entered into co-partnership with Thomas
Carter II, who began to pay annual rates of £10 on the property next to
Benjamin in 1758.
One of their first collaborative commissions was on 3
chimneypieces for the London house of Thomas Bridges at 18 Cavendish Street
(6-8). The partners both signed receipts for payments for this work, completed
between May and September 1757 at a cost of £210. The architect Henry Keene
supervised the contract, endorsed the designs and guaranteed that the entire
commission, including the polishing, would be approved by him personally.
Benjamin appears to have been one of the team of craftsmen employed by Keene,
which included the carpenter John Phillips (who was Thomas Carter I’s
executor), the mason Thomas Gayfere and the carver Thomas Dryhurst. In 1760
Carter, Gayfere, Dryhurst and several other craftsmen were the subjects of a
conversation-piece commissioned from the painter, Robert Pyle, as a gift for
Keene. The central figure is Keene himself, pointing to a plan on the table for
an unidentified building. Carter, in a wig and coat, appears to be challenging
Gayfere, for the two craftsmen face each other, leaning awkwardly over the
backs of their chairs.
In 1752 Carter provided the model for a lion which later
became a local landmark above the central elevation of Northumberland House,
London (3), then being refurbished by Keene. The Carters completed two fine
chimneypieces for the house in 1757 (5). The cross-members had relief tablets,
one carved with putti draping a lion with festoons and the other, putti draping
an eagle. Each massive overmantel was supported by caryatid figures, variants
of the Farnese Captives. The two sculptors received a handsome sum, £292, for
their work.
The taste for classically-inspired ornaments was well served
by the Carter workshop. In 1761 Benjamin modelled plaster reliefs for Henry
Hoare’s Pantheon at Stourhead at a cost of £268 (24). These reliefs, long
thought to be by Michael Rysbrack, included a Roman Marriage Ceremony and a
Triumphal Procession of Bacchus, both after engravings in Montfaucon’s
L’Antiquité Expliquée, 1721. A number of other payments to Carter appear in the
Hoare Accounts including a pedestal of coloured marbles for the ‘Florence box’,
and another, for an unknown site, of ‘Sienna, Genoa green, and black
marble’(25). They have not survived and were probably destroyed when the house
was gutted by fire in 1902.
In 1763 the partners supplied slabs of marble to Horace
Walpole and his architect, Richard Bentley, for a pair of commodes at
Strawberry Hill (28). There is a curious reference among Walpole’s letters
which indicates that this was not his first contact with the sculptors. In July
1755 Bentley suggested that Walpole should ‘traffic with Carter’ personally and
Walpole responded acidly ‘do you think I can turn broker, and factor, and I
don’t know what?’ (Lewis 1937-83, vol 35, 231).
Walpole was involved in the preliminary stages of Carter’s
most notable project, the monument to Lieutenant-Colonel Roger Townshend
erected in 1761 in Westminster Abbey (2). Lady Townsend asked Walpole to
recommend an artist to design a monument for her ‘brave son’ and Walpole, whose
talents did not include draughtsmanship, provided a drawing himself (Lewis
1937-83, vol 40, 166-8). It was not used, but the monument as realised was an
exemplary instance of collaborative practice. It was designed by Robert Adam,
the low relief of the dying hero was modelled by Luc-François Breton, and the
work’s construction seems to have been directed by the two Carters, who also
probably carved the handsome caryatid figures supporting the sarcophagus. These
take the form of North American Indians and allude to Townsend’s death at the
battle of Ticonderoga in 1759. The monument was signed by both Carters and by
the German sculptor, John Eckstein, who was employed by the workshop to carve
the relief from Breton’s model. The architect, Matthew Brettingham, felt that
there was ‘nothing equal to it in the Abbey’ (Fleming 1962 (2), 169).
In the 1760s the Carters were employed extensively by Robert
Adam to execute his designs for chimneypieces at Bowood (15-19), Lansdowne
House (13) and Syon House (23). At Syon they collaborated with ormolu
manufacturers to execute Adam’s designs for opulent fireplaces, charging £144
6s 6d for designing and modelling ornaments, carving mouldings to encase the
metalwork and ‘fitting and working the ornaments together’ (Harris 2001, 78).
Their assistant, Robert Staveley, was responsible for setting up the Bowood
chimneypieces, and also worked for them at Ashburnham Place, Sussex (12).
The precise nature of the Carter partnership is unclear but
it seems likely that Benjamin was in control for in 1763 the workshop was
advertised in Mortimer’s Universal Director under ‘Carter, Benjamin, Statuary,
Hyde Park Corner’ (p 6). He died late in 1766 and was buried in Datchet,
leaving his share of the business, including all the ‘stocks and effects’ to
his son John and wife Ann, who also inherited his household goods; he also made
provision for three younger children. One of his executors was the marble
merchant Edward Chapman Bird. Benjamin’s son, John Carter (1748-1817), was the
celebrated and eccentric antiquary, draughtsman and writer, noted for his
championship of medieval sculpture and architecture. He later claimed that from
the age of 12 he had prepared designs for assistants in his father’s workshop.
MGS
Literary References: GM, April 1812, 82, pt 1, 341; Smith
1828, II, 307; DNB; Smith 1945, 556; Fleming 1962 (2), 169; Gunnis 1968, 84;
Lewis 1973, vol 35, 231; vol 40, 166-8; Haskell and Penny 1981, 170; Allen
1983, 200; Harris 2001, 78
Archival References: IGI; Poor Rate, St George, Hanover
Square, WCA, 1751 (C240), 1757 (C298), 1758 (C300); Carter/Keen Accounts;
Archives, Marquess of Lansdowne; Ashburnham Archives; Hoare Private Accounts
1750-66, passim; 1752-78, I May 1759
Wills: Thomas Carter, 3 Sept 1756, PROB 11/824 fol 313-5;
Benjamin Carter, 13 Nov 1766, PROB 11/923 fol 173-6
Miscellaneous Drawings: design for a chimney-piece, signed,
sold as part of an album of chimneypiece drawings, Marlborough Rare Books, cat
81, 25 November 1977, lot 68 (repr)
Portraits of the Sculptor: Robert Pyle, Henry Keene and his
Craftsmen, 1768, formerly at Buxted Place, Sussex (destroyed); Smith 1945,
556-7 (repr); John Carter, after Robert Pyle, nd, pen, ink, wash and
watercolour, BM, PDB, 1908, 0714.48
...........................
Thomas Carter II (c. 1720 - 95).
Joseph Nollekens quoted by John Thomas Smith in Nollekens and his Time pub 1828
"Tom Carter always had a clever fellow with him to produce his work"
Brief Biog.
Nephew of Thomas Carter the Elder (1702 - 56), he was probably apprenticed to him.
On the elder Carters death in 1756 he bequeathed his stock to Benjamin Carter (1719 - 66), his brother, who had also specialised in chimneypieces.
Thomas II made the astute move of marrying the daughter of Thomas I, Elizabeth in February 1752.
When here father died she inherited a third of his property this probably enabled him to go into partnership with father and he was paying £10 annual rates on the property next door.
In 1756 in his uncle's will he is described as statuary.
In 1763, the workshop was advertised in Mortimer’s Universal Director under ‘Carter, Benjamin, Statuary, Hyde Park Corner’.
Following the death of Benjamin Carter in 1766, Thomas Carter the younger continued the business alone, operating from premises near White Horse Street in Piccadilly alongside the workshops of John Cheere etc.
By 1768 he had taken over the premises of his father. rated at £24 /annum and rented his previous workshop to Thomas Cramphorn probably father of William
He took on
several assistants, including an apprentice named William Cramphorn in 1768,
for which he received a premium of £40.
Tom Carter had a number of talented assistants including John Daintrey (Daintee), John Walsh, Thomas Earley, Peter Vangelder joined his staff in 1769., and was paid £2/week carving an unidentified statue in 1769.
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Some notes on John Deare.
Perhaps the most important of his assistants was John Deare who was articled to him around 1776 and paid half a guinea a week. Seven years later he sold him a chimneypiece tablet for 24 Guineas.
Deare suggested that Carter took advantage of his workers "it is a custom with him to make large promises to young fellows by which means he has gained grease to keep his carriage going".
He accused him of cupidity but their working relationship seems to haver remained amicable calling him a "blustering fellow but a good man" 1 May 1776.
As noted B JT Thomas in Nollekens...................
"One of the men bid me tell you, that Mr. Carter would give
me half-a-guinea, at least, a week, for the first part of my time, and fifteen
shillings for the latter part; but you will write to him, and ask him what he
proposes: he is, just as they say, a blustering fellow, but a good man. I have
seen two men hanged, and one with his breast cut open at Surgeons’ Hall. The
other being a fine subject, they took him to the Royal Academy, and covered him
with plaster of Paris, after they had put him in the position of the Dying
Gladiator. In this Hall there are some casts from Nature that are cut from the
middle of the forehead down to the lower part of the body, one part excoriated,
and the other whole".
He was articled to Thos. Carter, of Piccadilly, London, then residing in a small house on the site of No. 101 ; and at the age of sixteen he was employed in carving ornaments for chimney-pieces, in the exquisite performance of which he astonished the oldest practitioners.
But Deare's ambition soared to the highest sphere, and soon burst into envied notoriety by his attention to the human figure and historical subjects ; in which his natural abilities appeared so pre-eminent, that, on the 28th of November, 1780, he received the gold medal at the Royal Academy, for a most beautiful model.
He was at that time only in his twentieth year, and the youngest artist to whom that honour had ever been awarded." The medal was given for the best piece of sculpture.
The design is from Milton—the struggle in the air of Satan with the angel; and it is executed in alto-relievo. This specimen of the early talents of our townsman now ornaments the cast-room of the Liverpool Royal Institution.
In the same room is placed a medallion, produced by the mature and educated talents of Deare, during his residence in Italy, which was recovered by mere accident from oblivion. The subject is Eleanor sucking the poison fromthe wound of her husband.
Soon after gaining the prize, Deare, along with several other young men of promising talents, were sent out by the Royal Academy, under the patronage of his majesty George the Third, to pursue their studies at Rome.
.........................
John Eckstein. (1735 - 1818).
A young German called John (Johann) Eckstein signed the relief on the monument to Roger Townshend in Westminster Abbey (erected 1761), made in the workshop of Benjamin and Thomas Carter but worked from a terracotta model by Luc-François Breton.
The monument, which was designed by Robert Adam, has a relief of the General, depicted all’antica, expiring at the Battle of Ticonderoga. Adam is known to have sent his design to Rome, where it was modelled in terracotta by Luc-François Breton.
The monument to Colonel Roger Townshend for the nave of
Westminster Abbey, which includes two figures of Iroquois; the large model with the two figures on
the wall on the left in the watercolour of Benjamin Carter may be for this monument.
It therefore seems likely that
Eckstein was responsible only for translating the model to marble. Flaxman
described the monument as ‘one of the finest specimens of Art in the Abbey’
(JT Smith 1828, 2, 307) and although mutilated, it demonstrates that Eckstein
already possessed considerable carving ability.
In April 1762 the Society of Arts awarded him a premium for a Portland stone relief, which he exhibited the next year at the Society of Artists. Another premium followed in 1764.
Eckstein must have established a reputation during his years in England for in 1765 he accepted an invitation from Frederick the Great to go to Prussia, where he became the King’s principal sculptor and executed numerous works at Potsdam and Sans Souci. He remained there until 1769.
He was next employed by the Duke of Mecklenburg, who in 1770 sent him to England on a special mission.
Here he met with a flattering reception and exhibited wax portraits at the Royal Academy (4-6). During his stay his address was John Street, Oxford Street.
On concluding his mission he appears to have left
England for the last time, returning to the Grand Ducal Court at Ludwigslust.
.............
In 1777, Carter moved from his premises at Hyde Park corner to another property on the same street, where he remained until 1789 when two auctions of his stock were held.
Lots included marble, chimneypieces, tables, busts, casts, tablets, and figures, which were displayed in Carter’s yard and a large room upstairs.
Carter was also involved in the trade of
marbles; in 1789, a sale of newly imported marbles was advertised at ‘Mr
Carter’s Wharf called Stangate Wharfe, on the Surry side of Westminster-Bridge’.
Stangate Wharfe is labelled on the 1799 Horwood map.
He had a considerable workforce and persons who worked there included John Eckstein. They specialised in chimneypieces.
..............................
The Carter workshops were certainly capable of some very fine work.
Memorial to Chaloner Chute in the chapel of The Vyne in Hampshire. - Empty tomb.
The Carrara marble sculpture from the workshop of Thomas Carter the younger circa 1775-80.
It has been suggested that John Bacon was the sculptor of the effigy
Designed by John Chute c.1771 in honour of his ancestor. Carter's total fill for the tomb and floor paving acounted to £930 17s. 9d.
The Speaker in fact lies buried in St Nicholas Church, Chiswick.
The Chalone Chute Models.
....................................
The Rt Hon. William Conolly and his wife Katherine Conolly.
Thomas Carter I.
These images below lifted from the website of The Irish Aesthete.
I highly recommend this blog to anyone interested in the
culture of Ireland, in particular its architecture in the past and in many
places its disintegration in the present.
'In August 1736 the Dublin Gazette reported, 'On Friday last
two curious fine monuments, lately finished by Mr Carter near Hyde Park Corner,
were put on board a ship in the river in order to be carried to Ireland, to be
erected in the church of Castletown near Dublin, to the memory of the Rt. Hon.
William Conolly Esq., Late Speaker to the House of Commons, and his lady.' The
two life-sized figures of William and Katherine Conolly were commissioned by
the latter after her husband's death in 1729 from London-sculptor Thomas Carter
(although it has been proposed that Mrs Conolly's likeness may be from the hand
of his son, Thomas Carter Junior). Originally they formed part of a larger
monument in a mausoleum attached to the church in nearby Celbridge but in recent
decades this fell into disrepair and in 1993 the figures were removed to
Castletown where they can be found facing each other in a ground floor passage
behind the main staircase'.
.......................
Moore Monuments Great Bookham, Surrey.
Documents which have been found in the Bodleian Library,
Oxford and the University of
Keele confirm that there is a vault under the chancel of St
Nicolas Church, Gt Bookham which
contains at least the remains of Col Thomas Moore and his
nephew, William Moore; also, there
are two memorials in the church attributable to a Carter.
Colonel Thomas Moore’s memorial
was sculpted by Thomas Carter the Elder before his death in
1757, and William Moore’s memorial
was sculpted by Thomas Carter the Younger in 1759-60.
https://leatherheadhistoryarchive.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/VOL_6_NO_5_2001.pdf
Images below wikimedia.
_-_geograph.org.uk_-_4245222.jpg)
...................................
Benjamin Carter (1719 - 66) - The Reliefs at Stourhead.
In c. 1760 Benjamin Carter supplied Eight Plaster Relief Panels for the Pantheon priced at £16 each although he was paid £162 - 9s.
Each panel approx. 113 x 180 cms.
These reliefs were one offs and taken except for one from the Engravings in Montfaucons L'Antiquite explique, of 1721 or perhaps from the Montfaucon source - the illustrations by Pietro Santi Bartoli in Admiranda Rominarum Antiquitatum which had been drawn from original Roman reliefs in collections in Rome
The sculptor had previously supplied a marble chimneypiece and a pedestal for the Skylight Room .
Unfortunately I was unable to obtain good photographs of all the panels on my visit and hopefully I can return in due course and do the job properly.
Much of the information below comes from the Open University Thesis
see - https://oro.open.ac.uk/55678/1/JH%20PhD%20thesis%2028thJune2018.pdf
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The Quadriga Four Horse Chariot
Moving clockwise, the next bas-relief is above the Livia Augusta as Ceres statue and is a scene titled Mount Olympus This is a faithful reproduction of the Plate 27 scene from Admiranda Rominarum Antiquitatum in which Jupiter and Juno are shown seated with their symbolic animals, respectively the eagle and peacock.
Neptune is shown standing, and then Mercury, posed in such a way as to suggest that he is delivering a message. The accompanying text to the Admiranda Rominarum Antiquitatum plate confirms these identities, but unfortunately not the identity of the figure on the far right
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The Bacchic Celebration.
The next bas-relief is above the Meleager statue niche.451 Dodd has recently suggested that the panel was directly influenced by Poussin’s The Triumph of Bacchus.
The two depictions seem very close in style and content, though the Poussin painting has the figures processing from left to right. As well as the direction of the procession, a further difference is that in the Stourhead version the figures of Bacchus and Ariadne have been switched. Bacchus now rides on the male centaur’s back and Ariadne is seated in the carriage.
Hercules, depicted carrying the tripod in the Poussin painting, is one of the figures not reproduced in the bas-relief. There are also similarities with the Carracci fresco, which is a feature of the Palazzo Farnese.
The Poussin painting was known in Britain through preliminary sketches, including one given to Prince Frederick, the Prince of Wales (1707-51).
This panel is to the left of the entrance and above the Saint Susanna statue.461 It is virtually identical in content to plate 29 of ARA
The brief text that accompanies the ARA drawing indicates that the panel was believed to recount the tale of Theophane, a Thracian princess.
This tale is taken from Hyginus and recounts the story of how she was so beautiful that she attracted the ardent and unwanted attention of several suitors. Neptune was also taken with her beauty and carried her away to the Island of Crinisa. However, her suitors followed her. To protect her, Neptune turned her into a ewe and the island’s inhabitants into animals.
When Theophane’s suitors arrived on the island they began slaughtering the animals, so Neptune turned them into wolves. The god turned himself into a ram and coupled with Theophane and the result of this was the birth of Khrysomallos, the golden-fleeced ram.
Bacchus visiting the house of Icarius.
The scene has been simplified, with the three left furthest bacchantes omitted, as well as the background. However, the poses of the included figures are sufficiently similar to identify Plate 43 of ARA as the inspiration for this panel.
The text identifies the figures as characters from the Trimalchio’s feast from Petrarch’s Satyricon.
However, the original relief predates the writing of the Satyricon and is instead perhaps a representation of the story of Bacchus teaching Icarius how to make wine.Ellis cites Apollodorus and Hyginus as sources for this story.
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Carters at Uppark from Hewlings
The specialist tradesmen at Uppark between 1747 and 1754 were Londoners. For instance, 'Mr Carter the mason' was paid €1,060 between September 1747 and May 1748, and a further €50 in February 1753.
From 1748, slighly after the bulk of his work at Uppark, Benjamin Carter and his brother Thomas worked under Garrett's direction in the Long Gallery at Northumberland House;' this cannot have been their introduction to Uppark. In any case they were by no means Garrett's associates.Benjamin had worked under Roger Morris previously,2 and was to work under Flitcroft,g Stephen Wright,' Abraham Swan,' Brettingham,6 Keene/ and Adam.8
Thomas Carter had worked under Morris" and Leoni,10 and he was to work under Flitcroft,ll Abraham Swan,12 Paine, Adam 14 Brettingham,15 John Chute, 16 Soane, and Holland. 18
The two commissions which Thomas Carter had from Paine (Felbrigg in 1751,' 9 and Blagdon from 1753 to 176120) both post-date his (or Benjamin's) work at Uppark, and Paine's author-ship of Uppark cannot be advanced on that basis.
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