BANKS, Thomas - b. 1735 London, d. 1805 London - WGA

BANKS, Thomas

(b. 1735 London, d. 1805 London)

English sculptor. He studied in Rome 1772-79 and in 1781 was employed by Catherine the Great in Russia. Back in England, he became with Flaxman the leader of the Neoclassical movement in sculpture. He developed a particular interest in ancient sarcophagi, and his relief of the Death of Germanicus of 1774 (Earl of Leicester, Holkman Hall, Norfolk) was probably among the first sculptures produced by an English sculptor in a Neoclassical mode.

He had a very high reputation with his contemporaries: Reynolds called him ‘the first British sculptor who has produced works of classic grace’ and Queen Charlotte (queen consort of George III) is said to have wept when she saw his most famous work, the monument to Penelope, Boothby (Ashbourne Church, Derbyshire, 1793), in which the child is shown sleeping rather than dead. Small monuments such as this show Banks at his best, and his few surviving portrait busts demonstrate a gift for characterization. His larger monuments, however, are somewhat ponderous.

Monument to Captain Richard Rundle Burges

About 1770, sculptors firmly bound to the classical ideal began to emerge. The taste for heroic Classicism encouraged a more severe and historical style. The English sculptor Thomas Banks was preeminent among its proponents. On his return to England from Rome, where he had a considerable success, Banks continued to produce nude, heroic dramas that were well received by the Royal Academy, but his career centred on the production of less severe funerary monuments. Late in his career, the wars with France provided him with the chance of combining the two. He was commissioned to carve two of the monuments commemorating military officers fallen in the wars with France that were being erected in St Paul’s Cathedral in London. The resultant mixture of nudity with portraiture is striking.

Richard Rundle Burgess (c. 1755-1797) was a naval officer.

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Thetis Rising from the Sea

Presumably in 1778 Banks began work on his marble relief of Thetis Rising from the Sea with her nymphs to comfort Achilles on the death of Patrocles. Achilles and his best friend Patrocles had gone to the Trojan War together. When the Trojans threatened the Greek ships, Achilles gave his friend his own armor. His friend managed to repulse the Trojans, but was then killed in a duel with Hector. In the 18th book of the Iliad Homer describes the scene where Achilles’ mother Thetis rises from the sea with her nymphs to comfort her beloved son. The heroic fate of Achilles, who led the Greeks in the Trojan War and was himself killed by an arrow from Paris, was a subject that inspired Neoclassical artists time and again. Bank’s version sticks closely to the story told buy Homer, but used a style influenced by Fuseli, who tended to emphasize linearity. However, whereas the group around the rising Thetis fits within the oval frame, the figures of Achilles and Patrocles form a stark contrast in their angular poses.

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