Page:Dictionary of Artists of the English School (1878).djvu/38

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and exhibited in their galleries water- colour drawings till 1827, when he joined the Water-Colour Society, on his election as an associate member, and exhibited with the Society to 1834 ? and died in July of that year. He contributed landscapes and occasionally rustic figures, but his best works were coast scenes, introducing boats and figures, some of which were from sketches in Holland, France, and on the Rhine.

• AUSTIN, William, draftsman and engraver. Pupil of Bickham. Practised in London about the middle of the 18th century, but did not attain to much reput- ation. He engraved several landscapes; 10 plates of the ' Ruins of Palmyra ;' views of Rome, Venice, Athens ; 38 slight etch- ings after Lucatelli, 1781 ; and 'Windsor Park ' after Thomas Sandby. He for some

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time kept a print shop ; was a great hu- mourist, a great supporter of Charles Fox, and published some political caricatures, which were mostly directed against the French. He exhibited at the Academy in 1776 a view on the Rhine, but does not appear again as an exhibitor. He retired to Brighton, and died there in 1820, aged 99.

AYLESFORD,Heneaoe FiNOH,Fourth Earl of, amateur. Born in London, July 15. 1751. Was a clever draftsman in water- colours, working in a slight, free manner, chiefly in sepia or bistre. He was an honorary exhibitor at the Royal Academy, 1786-90, contributing architectural views. He also produced a few good etchings of cottages and rural scenery, some of which were published. He died October 20, 1812.

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p BACON, John, R.A., sculptor. Born in Southwark. November 24, 1740. Son of a cloth- worker in Southwark, who was descended from an old Somersetshire family. After a short schooling, he began to learn his father's trade ; but at the age of 15, was apprenticed to Mr. Crispe, a china manufacturer, who had a factory in Lambeth and his shop in Bow Churchyard. Here he was employed in modelling and painting porcelain, gained^knowledge from the fine works sent to the manufactory to be burnt, and making rapid progress, early conceived a notion of his art. In 1758 he gained a premium, and altogether, nine premiums from the Society of Arts, in- cluding an award of 50 guineas for his emblematic figure, ( Ocean.' During his apprenticeship he matured plans for em- ploying artificial stone for sculpture ; and, by his art, was the means of restoring Coade's manufacture, then falling into dis- use. He had hitherto lived in the City, and now removed to the West End. and entered in 1768 as a student of the Royal Academy, then founded. About the same time he began to work in marble, and invented a machine for transferring the design in plaster with mechanical accuracy to the marble. In 1769 he gained the first gold medal given by the Academy for a bas-relief, 'jEneas escaping from Troy.' He had now given proofs of his genius as a sculptor, and in 1770 he was elected an associate of the Royal Academy. He estab- lished his reputation by his fine statue of ' Mars,' and gained the favour of the king by a bust of his Majesty, which he executed for the Archbishop of York. He

had for a time lived in Wardour Street. He now married and removed to Newman Street ; but he lost his wife within three years, and married a second time. His talent now gained him full employment* and he was commissioned to execute some important public works ; among them may be pointed out— the monuments to Pitt in the Guildhall, London, and in Westminster Abbey ; to Dr. Johnson and Howard the Philanthropist, in St. Paul's; the bronze statue of George III. and the two groups and colossal figure of the 'Thames' m Somerset House; also the monument of Mrs. Draper (Sterne's ' Eliza/), in Bristol Cathedral ; of Judge Blackstone, at Oxford ; of Mr. Whitbread, at Uphill, Bedfordshire; and of Lord Cornwalhs, for India. He greatly improved the sculptor's pointing- machine. He owed much to his natural genius ; in design and execution, though he never acquired the art of using the chisel, he showed an original delicacy, which was neither derived from the study of the antique nor any conventional ideal of beauty. ' He wrote the article ' Sculpture ' in Rees's 'Encyclopaedia.' His works, which are almost confined to portrait sculpture, possess great simplicity of treat- ment. He did not attempt classic subjects. He was, with some interruptions, an exhi- bitor at the Royal Academy up to his death, which befell at the height of a successful career; when in the prime of life he was seized with inflammation of the bowels, and died in Newman Street, where he had resided 22 years, August 4, 1799. He was buried at Whitfield's Chapel, known as the Tabernacle, Tottenham i 17