for a statue of Burns, and for one of John Kemble for Westminster Abbey, and on sketches for friezes for the external decoration of Buckingham Palace, then uncompleted. In his seventy-second year he lived still surrounded by honour and affection, and as busy almost as ever, though visibly failing in strength; when, on 3 Dec. 1826, he caught a cold in church, which turned quickly to inflammation. On the morning of the the 7th he died. He was buried, with no public mourning, in the church of St. Giles-in-the-Fields.
The most important and complete monumental works of Flaxman, including those above mentioned and others, are to be found in Westminster Abbty, in St. Paul's, at Glasgow, and in Calcutta; his most ambitious classical and decorative groups and figures at Petworth, Ickworth, Woburn, Deepdene, and Wolverley Hall. But neither of these classes of work represent him at his best. His occupation on wax models for Wedgwood had accustomed him in youth to work chiefly on a minute scale; and on a large scale he never learnt to design or execute with complete mastery. Many of the shortcomings of his heroic monuments are due to the fact of his having used half-sized, or even smaller, instead of full-sized models in their preparation. They are, moreover, often marred by inexpressiveness and lack of thoroughness in the treatment of the marble; Flaxman not having been himself very skilful with the chisel, and having been content, except in a few instances (as the 'Fury of Athamas' and the Academy relief of 'Apollo and Marpessa,' which he is said to have finished in great part with his own hand), with the empty mechanical polish which the Italian workmen of the time imitated from the Roman imitations of Greek originals. His real genius appears far better in the memorial reliefs in honour of the private dead, which are to be found in so many churches throughout England—in Chichester Cathedral no less than eight, in the cathedrals of Winchester and Gloucester, in the churches of Leeds, Manchester, Campsall, Tewkesbury, Ledbury, Michaldever, Heston, Chertney, Cookham, Lewisham, Beckenham, Leyton, Milton, and many more. For this class of work his favourite form of design was one of symbolic figures or groups in relief, embodying some simple theme of sorrow or consolation, a beatitude, or a text from the Lord's Prayer. Such motives lose all triteness in his hands, and are distinguished by a unique combination of typical classic grace with heart felt humanity and domestic pathos. But of these, too, the execution in marble is often not equal to the beauty of the motive, and in many cases they can be studied almost batter in the collection of casts from the clay models preserved in the Flaxman Hall at University College than in the marbles themselves. Perhaps the most entirely satisfactory class of Flaxman's works is to be found, not among his sculptures, but his drawings and sketches and pen outline,pan and wash, or pencil. These are very numerous, and include ideas and essays for almost all his extant or projected works, whether in sculpture or outline illustrations, as well as many hundred studies and motives from life or fancy not afterwards used. Slight as they commonly are, abstract and generalised as is their treatment of anatomical forms, they stand alone by the peculiar quality of their beauty; expressing, in lines of a charm equal to, and partly caught from, that of antique vase-painting and bas-reliefs, the inventions and observations of a singularly gifted, pure, lofty, and tender spirit. The best public collections of them are in the British Museum, the South Kensington Museum, in the Flaxman Hall at University College, and the Fitz-william Museum, Cambridge; many more remain in private hands.
John Flaxman's elder brother, William Flaxman (1753?-1795?), was also a modeller and exhibitor. He contributed to the exhibition of the Free Society of Artists in 1768, and to those of the Academy at intervals between 1781 (when he sent a portrait of John Flaxman in wax) and 1793. He is said to have been distinguished as a carver in wood. No details of his life have been preserved in any published memoir or correspondence of his brother.
Of more note as an artist, and more closely associated with the sculptor's career, was his half-sister, Mary Ann Flaxman (1768-1833). She lived as governess in the family of the Hare Naylors for several years, first in Italy and afterwards at Weimar; and from 1810 was an inmate of John Flaxman's house at Buckingham Street until his death. Her work in art was strongly influenced by his example, and shows both talent and feeling. She is best known by the six designs for Hayley's 'Triumphs of Temper,' engraved by Blake, and published in 1803. Her contributions to the Royal Academy occur at intervals between 1780 and 1819, and consist chiefly of designs in illustration of poetry and romance.
