John Flaxman, R.A.

This drawing dates to circa 1780 when Flaxman was around twenty-five years of age and it is one of three surviving pencil studies made at this time by Flaxman that depict the Mathew family.¹

The Mathews lived at 27 Rathbone Place, London and were among Flaxman’s most important early friends and patrons. Dr Mathew was a distinguished cleric, while his wife, Harriet, was something of a ‘blue-stocking’ who held regular literary salons. Flaxman was invited to these gatherings and it is said that Mrs Mathew would ‘read Homer and Virgil aloud, while Flaxman drew such scenes from the text as took his fancy’² - a practice that would have a great effect on the direction of his career.

The subject of this drawing, Henry William Mathew, was privately schooled before enrolling at Peterhouse, Cambridge, his father’s old college. In 1793 he was commissioned as a Physician in the Indian Army but he resigned two years later. He is described as having served in India and in Brittany and Flanders. 

The portrait is part of a group of studies that Iolo Williams discusses in his 1960 Burlington Magazine essay (see Literature). Each of these works is inscribed in ink with a capital F. Rather than signifying the first letter of the artist’s name, it is has been suggested that this character is a (so far unidentified) collectors mark.

1. Williams, op. cit, p. 246

2. Ibid., p. 249