Background
John Bacon was born in Southwark, London, United Kingdom on the 24th of November 1740, the son of Thomas Bacon, a cloth-worker, whose forefathers possessed a considerable estate in Somersetshire.
John Bacon was born in Southwark, London, United Kingdom on the 24th of November 1740, the son of Thomas Bacon, a cloth-worker, whose forefathers possessed a considerable estate in Somersetshire.
At fourteen John Bacon was apprenticed to a Mr. Crispe for whom he modeled groups of figures. Upon the foundation of the Royal Academy in 1768, Bacon entered as a student.
Bacon first attempted working in marble around 1763, when he resided in George Yard on Oxford Rd. near Soho Square. He exhibited a medallion of George III and a group of Bacchanalians that year and a bas relief of the Good Samaritan the next. During the course of his early efforts in this art, he was led to improve the method of transferring the form of the model to the marble ("getting out the points") by the invention of a more perfect instrument for the purpose. This instrument possessed many advantages: it was more exact, took a correct measurement in every direction, was contained in a small compass, and could be used on either the model or the marble.
In 1771, Ms Coade appointed him works supervisor at her manufactory: he directed both model-making and design there until his death. In 1774, he was gifted with a new establishment at 17 Newman St. by a Mr Johnson who was a great admirer of his work. He executed a bush of George III for Christ Church, Oxford, and retained that king's favour throughout his life. Jealous competitors criticised him for ignorance of classic style, a charge he refuted with a bust of Jupiter Tonans. In 1795, he completed a statue of Samuel Johnson for St Paul's Cathedral.
On 4 August 1799 he was suddenly attacked with an affliction described as "inflammation"; he died a little more than two days later on the 7th and was buried in Whitefield's Tabernacle in London.
Bacon has been reckoned the founder of the British School of sculpture.
Society for the Encouragement of the Arts gave him the prizes. Subsequently, its highest awards were given to him nine times between 1763 and 1776.
By 1769, he was working for Ms Coade's Artificial Stone Manufactory and in that year he was awarded the first gold medal for sculpture awarded by the Royal Academy for a bas-relief representing the escape of Aeneas and Anchises from Troy. In 1770, he exhibited a figure of Mars, redone in marble the next year for Mr Pelhalm, which gained him the gold medal from the Society of Arts and his election as an associate of the Royal Academy (ARA).
