Education
Meanwhile he also served an apprenticeship to the London carver Thomas Carter from 1776 to 1783, when he completed it and began sculpting as a freelancer, especially for his old master as well as for John Bacon (whose work he admired) and John Cheere.
Career
Deare was himself admired by his contemporaries, particularly by Joseph Nollekens. However, his only surviving early works are those he produced to be made in ceramic by Derby for clocks by Benjamin Vulliamy. The Royal Academy gave him a pension for a three-year stay in Rome (on the condition he sent back a work to the Research Associate"s annual exhibition), starting in 1785, where he starting drawing the classical sculpture collections at (among others) the Villa Albani and the Capitoline Museums, probably joined the Adamiani sect (insisting God be worshipped naked) and set up an artistic circle including Robert Fagan, Charles Grignion the Younger, Samuel Woodforde and George Cumberland.
Foreign his exhibition piece he modelled in plaster (with over 20 figures and emulating history painting of the time, it was the largest 18th-century relief by a British artist) but the Academy argued with him over its size and it was not sent to London (a marble version, commissioned by Sir Richard Worsley in 1788, is now in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art).
His next relief was Edward and Eleanor (drawn from a play by James Thomson).