John, an eminent English sculptor, born at York July 6, 1755, was the second son of John Flaxman, a moulder in plaster, who kept a shop in London for the sale of his figures. He was of a weakly constitution, and slightly deformed, which prevented him from mingling in the robust pastimes of youth; but he was not idle. Behind his father's counter, with drawing materials before him, he busily employed himself in transferring to paper representations of the numerous figures with which he was surrounded. But he did not confine himself to copying alone. Young as he was, he had dipped into the Iliad, and actually attempted to design historical illustrations of that immortal epic. His education seems to have devolved principally upon his parents; and as his thirst for knowledge was great, the superintendence of his studies must have been an easy task. At his books and models he laboured incessantly, and before he entered his tenth year he had made a great number of small models in plaster of Paris, wax, and clay, some of which are still preserved; and, besides being interesting as the first efforts of genius, they possess considerable merit as works of art. At ten years of age a salutary change took place in his health; he became strong, lively, and active; and the crutches by means of which he had hitherto walked were thrown aside. With renovated health he came to the determination to follow sculpture as a profession. In his father's shop, where he assiduously pursued his studies, he learned form and proportion from the casts of antique statues which it contained; whilst in the woods and fields he was supplied with new images and ideas of beauty. At the house of a Mrs Mathew, whose husband had been attracted to the youthful sculptor, Flaxman often spent his evenings hearing her read Homer and Virgil, and discourse upon sculpture and poetry. By this lady he was encouraged to study the dead languages; and although he never attained to great scholarship, he obtained such a knowledge of Greek as enabled him to embody the ideas of the ancient poets in a manner which no modern artist has surpassed. He embodied those passages which caught his fancy whilst he sat listening to Mrs Mathew; and the taste displayed in these juvenile efforts induced a gentleman to order six large drawings in chalk, the subjects being chosen from antiquity. The praise bestowed upon these gave new impulse to his genius, and strengthened that consciousness of superior power which he early experienced; yet he never overrated himself; nor allowed his industry to relax on account of the flatteries of friends, but continued to labour assiduously, well knowing that it was only in this manner that great eminence was to be attained in art.

In his fifteenth year Flaxman became a student of the Royal Academy, and soon made himself known by assiduous and enthusiastic application. In the same year he carried off the silver medal; and in due time became a candidate for the gold one, but was unsuccessful. This defeat, however, only increased his assiduity; but finding himself now compelled to labour for bread, he employed himself with the Wedgewoods, the enterprising potters, to make designs for adorning their wares. His sketches consisted chiefly of small groups in very low relief, the subjects being taken from ancient poetry and history. Previously to this period the porcelain of England had little external beauty to recommend it; and the genius of Flaxman may be said to have created this branch of art in his native country. In 1782 he quitted the paternal roof, and married Miss Ann Denman, a lady of many virtues and accomplishments, in whose society he enjoyed much domestic happiness. During the ten years which preceded this event he had exhibited some thirteen works at the Royal Academy, but, from the pecuniary difficulties under which he laboured, none of these were executed in marble. Shortly after his marriage he formed the resolution of studying at Rome; and at the end of five years of incessant labour, during which he executed several monuments and other works of considerable merit, he was enabled to carry his design into execution. In Rome he executed a number of works. For three individuals of his own country he illustrated Homer, Æschylus, and Dante. These designs are splendid, being varied with great skill, and drawn with a fine sense of the beautiful and harmonious in composition. Of works in marble he executed a small-size group of Cephalus and Aurora; a statue of Lord Mansfield; a group representing Flaxman's statue of Lord Mansfield had raised the expectations of his countrymen to a high pitch. In 1797 he was elected associate of the Royal Academy, during which year he sent to the exhibition three sketches in bas-relief from the New Testament, and a monument to Sir William Jones. The sketches are distinguished for their elegance of grouping. The monument is a bas-relief, but not one of the artist's most fortunate efforts in that line. In the forty-fifth year of his age Flaxman was elected a member of the Royal Academy, and, as is usual on such occasions, presented to the institution a work of art. His offering on this occasion was a marble group of Apollo and Marpessa; the conception of which is fine, though the workmanship is not so good. In the mechanical use of the chisel he never excelled. It was now his ambition to be employed upon some great national work, and he proposed to make a statue of Britannia two hundred feet in height, but the project was not carried into execution. His fame, however, was now firmly established, and commissions flowed rapidly in. A quick succession of noble works followed from his hand, one of which, a monument in memory of the family of Sir Francis Baring, is considered among the greatest efforts of his genius. One of his biographers remarks with respect to it, "This is one of the finest pieces of motionless poetry in the land." Of historical monuments Flaxman executed several, but they are not equal to his other works. They have been admired for the fine sentiment which pervades them, but their execution is considered by many as coarse and heavy. The statue of Sir Joshua Reynolds is one of his best productions. But the works he loved most were those which embodied poetical passages in the Bible; and of these he executed a great number. In 1810 the Royal Academy created a professorship of sculpture, and bestowed it upon Flaxman. His lectures are ten in number. The style is rather heavy; yet although his compositions are destitute of those flashes of poetry which irradiate the pages of Fuseli, they display a very comprehensive knowledge of the subject, much sound sense, and are more calculated to convey definite information to the student than those of the other artist above named. But if the offspring of his pen was cold and uninformed with ideal beauty, the productions of his pencil and chisel display an exuberance of imagination. His sketches and drawings are very numerous. Amongst the works which he illustrated were the Pilgrim's Progress, Sotheby's translation of Oberon, and Hesiod. These designs are in all respects fully equal to his other works, and unsurpassed by anything which ever was executed in that line. During the last ten years of his life Flaxman produced some of his noblest works. Amongst these were the group of the Archangel Michael vanquishing Satan, the Shield of Achilles, Psyche, the Pastoral Apollo, and the statues of Michael Angelo and Raffaelle. The first is a work of the highest merit, and worthy of the great poem which it illustrates. "In the Psyche and the Pastoral Apollo," says Mr Allan Cunningham, "the genius of him who illustrated Homer is sufficiently apparent; a certain austere composure is breathed over them. The Michael Angelo and the Raphael are poetic, yet real; heroic, yet familiar; and their costume, though not antique, is at once historic and picturesque." Flaxman's statues of Burns and Kemble, executed about the same time, are scarcely so happy. Amongst his other works were monuments to Collins at Chichester, and to Earl Howe in St Paul's; and statues of Washington, Nelson, Pitt, and Sir John Moore. They are of various excellence, yet all more or less bear the impress of genius and taste. But the career of this great sculptor was drawing to a close. In the beginning of December 1826 he was seized with an inflammation of the lungs, which terminated fatally on the 7th of the same month.

In stature Flaxman was small, and his figure was slim. In manners he was mild, gentle, and placable; and his mind, whilst it was rich in the gifts of genius, was embued with unaffected piety. Of his works there are four kinds; the religious, the poetic, the classic, and the historical. In each of these he has left specimens which entitle him to rank very high as an artist; but in all he has not attained the same degree of excellence. In the historical and the classic he was less successful; but in the religious and poetic he has been surpassed by no modern sculptor in purity, simplicity, and taste. His religious compositions consist of groups and figures embodying moral and spiritual passages from Scripture. They are generally of small dimensions, but very numerous. His mind was essentially poetical; and his productions are embued with the finest inspiration. It was probably of some of these works that Sir Thomas Lawrence spoke when he said of Flaxman, "His solitude was made enjoyment to him by a fancy teeming with images of tenderness, purity, or grandeur. His genius, in the strictest sense of the words, was original and inventive." His lectures were published in 1829, in one vol. 8vo, illustrated with fifty-two plates. (J.V.S.)