Banks, Thomas
- Dictionary and Archive of Travellers
- Title
- Banks, Thomas
- Full Text of Entry
-
(1735 - 1805), sculptor, studied under Barlow and at St Martin's Lane Academy; premium SA 1763, 1765, 1769; gold medal RA 1770; m. 1766 Elizabeth Hooton; exh. Free SA 1767 - 9; RA betw. 1770 - 1803 (in 1778 from Rome); in St Petersburg 1781 - 2; ARA 1784; RA 1786.
1772 - 9 [dep. London Jul. 1772] Rome (22 Sep. 1772 - 1779), Naples (Apr. 1779), Rome ( - 18 May) [London 1779]
Following his success both as student and exhibitor, Banks was sent to Rome for three years by the Royal Academy in 1772. He was then thirty-seven, 'a man of strict integrity and great simplicity of manners, and blunt even to rudeness'.1 He travelled with his wife, whose private income enabled him to stay a further four years in Rome, and their only child Lavinia (later Mrs Forster) was born in Rome, probably in 1775.2
They left London in July 1772 and arrived in Rome on 22 September. Though rather older than many other British artists in Rome, Banks appears to have mixed easily in their company; the painter Ozias Humphry and the young architect Edward Stevens and his wife became close friends, and he had high regard (which was reciprocated) for Henry Fuseli. Towards the end of their stay, in June 1778, Banks read the service at the funeral of Mrs William Pars, the painter's wife.3
Banks was well occupied in Rome. He wrote to Nollekens's father on 4 February 1774 describing how he had acquired some training in marble cutting ('in which the Italians beat us hollow') from 'Capitsoldi' [G.B. Capezzoli], and that year he worked on the marble relief of Alcyone discovering Ceyx (RA 1775) and modelled the relief of The Death of Germanicus for Thomas Coke of Norfolk (the marble now at Holkham). George Grenville commissioned a marble relief of Caractacus which was sent to England in December 1777 (now at Stowe) and the Bishop of Derry commissioned two heads (unidentified) and a figure of Cupid (which was eventually sold to Catherine of Russia). Banks also completed the plaster model of a Thetis (Soane Museum) for a marble relief (VAM). Sometime before 1778 (when he left Rome) the painter Robert Home had sat for a 'colossal [terracotta] bust' (RA 1781). In 1778 Banks sent for exhibition at the RA a marble bust of a lady and in May that year Thomas Jones sat for his bust in exchange for a picture.3 Banks's last work in Rome appears to have been a model for a monument to the Earl of Chatham (d. May 1778), which, however, arrived in England too late for a competition held in the autumn of 1779.
Despite such business, on 1 April 1778 Mrs Banks revealed to Humphry that all was not well: 'what unfortunate people we are, out of Commissions that were order'd in one season, to the amount of Nine hundred pounds ... that only two hundred should come to anything'. George Grenville had disputed payments for the Caractacus, the Bishop of Derry had characteristically reneged on his commissions, and there had also been 'some ill usage from a few other Gent.' On 4 November Mrs Banks was telling Humphry that there was little prospect for a sculptor in Rome: 'Gentlemen will not purchase anything larger than what they can carry on their fingers, or Snuff-boxes'. Banks became not only depressed but ill. For seven weeks in November - December 1778 he lay in bed with a fever, as Mrs Banks explained to Humphry on 5 January 1779, occasionally murmuring 'Oh, Mr Grenville, thou art principally the cause', and 'Oh, the Bishop, thou also hast a hand in it'. He was nursed by his wife and the painter James Durno, 'a friend in Need and a friend indeed', who shared rooms with them in the Stalla di Mignanelli, near the Piazza di Spagna in 1777 and 1778.4 In December 1778, at the height of Banks's fever, young Maria Hadfield arrived by invitation to stay with them.
On his recovery, Banks was anxious to return home and in February 1779 Lady Catherine Beauclerk organised a raffle for the Alcyone, presumably to raise funds for the journey. It was won by Henry Swinburne, who gave it to Sir Thomas Gascoigne (it is now at Lotherton Hall).5 By April 1779 Banks was fit enough to go with his wife in a party of English artists, including Maria Hadfield, to spend a month in Naples.6 They spent little time in Rome on their return, departing on 18 May with Maria for England.7
1. Northcote Memorials, 153 - 4. 2. See Bell, Banks, 16 - 51. 3. Jones Memoirs, 73. 4. AVR SA, S. Andrea delle Fratte. 5. L. Stainton, Burl.Mag. 116[1974]:327 - 31. Swinburne, Courts, 1:234 (8 Feb. 1779). 6. Northcote Memorials, 164. 7. Jones Memoirs, 89.