Holme Cardwell

Sir John Pender KCMG GCMG FSA FRSE (1816 – 1896)

Manchester, Art Treasures of the United Kingdom, 1857

R. Gunnis, Dictionary of British Sculptors 1660-1851, London, p.78;

J. Peck, Catalogue of Art Treasures of the United Kingdom: collected at Manchester in 1857, London, 1857, p.134, no.56

This impressive figure of Paris is one of the defining works of the British 19th-century sculptor Holme Cardwell. Prominently exhibited in the 1857 Art Treasures of the United Kingdom exhibition in Manchester, the marble was owned by the celebrated industrialist Sir John Pender. Pender is best known for his role as a communications cable pioneer, successfully laying the first transatlantic cable from Valentia Island, Ireland, to Hearts Content, Newfoundland, in 1866. He was a significant art collector who owned, amongst other masterpieces, J. M. W. Turner's Giudecca La Donna Della Salute and San Georgio, a view of Venice.

Holme Cardwell, a native of Manchester, attended the Royal Academy School in London in 1834. Probably aged 19 (although there is some uncertainty over his year of birth, his gravestone registers 20 May 1813), he was recommended to the school by Sir Francis Chantrey RA. Building a considerable reputation for himself, including a silver medal for a model in 1839, he left London for Paris in 1841 to study with David d’Angers (1788-1856). He probably stayed in Paris for three years, training at the Académie Royale, before moving to Rome. In the following years of his career, he was to move between Rome and London several times, settling primarily in Rome. Active within the milieu of British expatriate artists and sculptors in Rome, he acquired many admirers, including the renowned sculptor John Gibson RA (1790-1866). Cardwell exhibited at the Royal Academy between 1837 and 1856.

RELATED LITERATURE

I. Roscoe, E. Hardy and M. G. Sullivan, A Biographical Dictionary of Sculptors in Britain, 1660-1851, London, 2009, p. 194