CHANTREY, Sir FRANCIS, an eminent English sculptor, was b. at Jordanthorpe, in Derbyshire. on 7th April, 1781, not 1782, as has been generally said. His father, who was a carpenter, and rented a small farm, died when C. was only 12 years of age, leav ing his mother in narrow circumstances. It is said that she gave him " as liberal an education as her limited means would admit;" but much cannot be meant by the phrase, if it be true, as asserted by Holland in his Memorials, that his attendance at the little lane-school was very irregular, and that "for a while he certainly drove an ass daily, with milk-barrels, between Norton and Sheffield." C.'s mother married a second time, and the boy was, in 1797, apprenticed for 7 years to a carver and gilder in Sheffield called Ramsay. It was in this humble department that C. acquired the rudiments of his future art. It was during this period that his first attempts at modeling in clay were made, and that by the help of casts taken from the faces of his fellow-apprentices and his own, he began the work of portraiture, in which his great eminence ultimately consisted. C.'s apprenticeship was canceled two years before its expiry; but his sub sequent career is not very accurately known. It is certain that he visited both London and Dublin in 1802, probably in the capacity of a journeyman carver and gilder; and in that year he seems to have received instruction as a pupil of the royal academy. It was probably then that he commenced seriously to prepare himself for the work of his future life. In the earlier part of his career as an artist, C. is said to have been under great obligations to Nollekens, who had the shrewdness to see, and the generosity to see with out envy, his great promise in the branch in which he himself was eminent. In 1816, C.
was elected an associate, and in 1818 a member of the royal academy; and in 1819 he visited Italy for the first time. Like the lives of many other eminent men, that of C. presents few claims on our interest after his early struggles were ended. As an ideal artist, he never attained a high rank, and, in comparison with Flaxman, he possessed little reputation in this country and none abroad. But he executed, with much truth to nature, as it presented itself to his eye, an endless variety and almost countless number of works of individual portraiture, so that there is scarcely any town of importance in Great Britain which cannot show specimens of his skill. As a result of his diligence in this department of art, C. accumulated a very considerable fortune, the greater part of which, after providing for his widow, he bequeathed for artistic purposes. In this respect, he formed a remarkable contrast to Flaxman, whose modest savings were sworn under £4,000; whilst Nollekens, whose name is alinost forgotten, realized the enormous sum of R150,000, it is even said £200,000. C. died childless on the 25th Nov., 1841, and was buried in a tomb prepared by himself at Norton. Lady C. died in Jan., 1875, and the interest of her husband's gift to the royal academy, amounting to about .C3,000 a year, is now at the disposal of the council, for the " promotion of British art."