That Most Ingenious Modeller Book

The author s chance discovery of two un-attributed, exquisite sets of plaster tablets miniatures to a scale of 1/20 of the Parthenon frieze and a second from the Temple at Phygalia in Durham Castle and the nearby Bishop s Palace initiated this biography of a most remarkable and hitherto unsung artist. Born in Paisley in 1771 in humble circumstances, son of a jobbing carpenter to whom he was apprenticed as a young man. Almost by accident he becomes an amateur sculptor of finely executed cameo portrait medallions of friends and neighbours, in an enamel medium of his own composition. Newly married to Catherine Sunter in 1799, aged 28, he courageously quits the security of a carpenter for the uncertainties of a professional artist, first in Glasgow, then in Edinburgh. He quickly attracts patrons in High Society, notably Sir Walter Scott and General Vyse, C m C Scotland. The quality of his work is attested when Josiah Wedgwood the potter undertakes to produce and promote some outstanding pieces. In 1811, on the advice of friends, principally the candid author Mrs Anne Grant, J.H. moves to London and almost immediately falls under the spell of the Elgin Marbles newly installed in Burlington House, the home of their eponymous owner. (There follows a description of the Parthenon and Phygahan friezes, their history, setting, subject matter, discovery and transmission to the U.K.). Favourably impressed by J.H. s unaffected plain-speaking Lord Elgin grants him permission to draw from and copy his acquisitions. There follows an unremitting labour that was to occupy 12 years of his life through many vicissitudes, not least the jealousy and obstruction of London s art establishment. J.H. becomes a favourite of the great and the good , among them the teenage Princess Charlotte. She commissions a portrait medallion that sparks LH.s ambition to employ his drawings to produce miniature copies of the Parthenon and Phygalian friezes from innovative slate moulds. These now constitute his chief claim to fame. The high point of J.H. 5 vocation is the purchase of a set of the Parthenon miniatures (now lost!) by King William IV. Only 5 others known to have survived, including two that came to light as a direct outcome of the research for this volume. J.H. attempts to recoup some of the cost of his self-denying enterprise from the sale of halfscale copies of the Parthenon frieze based on his miniatures for the adornment of large apartments , notably the London home of the Royal College of Surgeons and Osborne House in the Isle of Wight, and a full-scale version round the façade of the Athenaeum Club in Pall Mall. There follows a comprehensive survey of competition for J.H. in the form of life-size casts taken officially and unofficially from the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum. j,L becomes a leader of the campaign for a law of copyright, having suffered financially and professionally from the unchecked piracy of his work by unscrupulous copyists. J.H. s character, as revealed in his voluminous correspondence, is explored in depth. A favourite with the ladies and children on account of his engaging personality, his handsome appearance, and his native Scottish brogue. A welcome guest at house parties hosted by Edinburgh Society, he features among the first subjects of the pioneer Scottish photographers Hill and Adamson, for example in amateur dramatics as the licensed beggar Eddie Ochiltree in his friend Sir Walter Scott s novel The Antiquary . Although the ageing J.H. returns occasionally to his native heath to be feted by friends and neighbours, he returns to his self-imposed exile in London, gradually declining into poverty and obscurity. After the death of his beloved Kate in 1849, the remaining two years of his life are especially poignant, neglected by four of his five children whoseRead More