Francis Legatt Chantrey was born on the 7th of April 1782 at Norton near Sheffield, where his father, a carpenter, cultivated a small farm.
His father died when he was eight years of age; and his mother having married again, his profession was left to be chosen by his friends.
Although apprenticed to a woodcarver, Chantrey studied intermittently at the Royal Academy Schools, at first intending to be a portrait painter.
In his sixteenth year he was on the point of being apprenticed to a grocer in Sheffield, when, having seen some wood-carving in a shop-window, he requested to be made a carver instead, and was accordingly placed with a Mr Ramsey, wood- carver in Sheffield.
In this situation he became acquainted with Raphael Smith, a distinguished draftsman in crayon, who gave him lessons in painting; and Chan trey, eager to commence his course as an artist, procured the cancelling of his indentures, and went to try his fortune in Dublin and Edinburgh, and finally (1802) in London.
He exhibited pictures at the Academy for some years from 1804, but from 1807 onwards devoted himself mainly to sculpture.
The sculptor Nollekens showed particular zeal in recognizing his merits.
He afterwards executed for Greenwich hospital four colossal busts of the admirals Duncan, Howe, Vincent and Nelson; and so rapidly did his reputation spread that the next bust which he executed, that of Horne Tooke, procured him commissions to the extent of £12, 000.
In 1819 he visited Italy, and became acquainted with the most distinguished sculptors of Florence and Rome.
The principal are the statues of Washington in the State-house at Boston, U. S. A. ; of George III in the Guildhall, London; of George IV at Brighton; of Pitt in Hanover Square, London; of James Watt in Westminster Abbey and in Glasgow; of Roscoe and Canning in Liverpool; of Dalton in Manchester; of Lord President Blair and Lord Melville in Edinburgh, &c. Of his equestrian statues the most famous are those of Sir Thomas Munro in Calcutta, and the duke of Wellington in front of the London Exchange.
The figures of two children asleep in each other's arms, which form a monumental design in Lichfield cathedral, have always been lauded for beauty, simplicity and grace.
The capital sum available amounted to £105, 000 in 3 % Consols, which (since reduced to 2-1 %) produces an available annual income varying from £2500 to £2x00.
Galleries in the Victoria and Albert Museum at South Kensington were at first adopted as the depository of the works acquired, until in 1898 the Royal Academy arranged with the treasury, on behalf of the government, for the transference of the collection to the National Gallery of British Art, which had been erected by Sir Henry Tate at Millbank.
Inasmuch as it was felt that the provision that all works must be complete to be eligible for purchase militated against the most advantageous disposition of the fund in respect of sculpture, in the case of wax models or plaster casts before being converted into marble or bronze, it was sought in the action of Sir F. Leighton v. Hughes (tried by Mr Justice North, judgment May 7th, 1888, and in the court of appeal, before the master of the rolls, Lord Justice Cotton, and Lord Justice Fry, judgment June 4th, 1889-the master of the rolls dissenting) to allow of sculptors being commissioned to complete in bronze or marble a work executed in wax or plaster, such " completion " being more or less a mechanical process.
The committee consisted of the earls of Carlisle, Lytton, and Crewe, and Lords Windsor, Ribblesdale, Newton, and Killanin, and the witnesses represented the Royal Academy and representative art institutions and art critics.
In reply thereto a memorandum was issued by the Royal Academy (February 1905, ordered to be printed on the 7th of August 1905-Paper 166) disagreeing with certain recommendations, but allowing others, either intact or in a modified form. Up to 1905 inclusive 203 works had been bought-all except two from living painters-at a cost of nearly £68, 000.
Of these, 175 were in oil-colours, 12 in water-colours, and 16 sculptures (10 in bronze and 6 marble).
He was chosen an associate (1815) and afterwards a member of the Royal Academy received the degree of M. A. from Cambridge, and that of D. C. L. from Oxford, and in 1835 was knighted.
Chantrey was a man of warm and genial temperament.
