Francis Bird, Sculptor, 1667–1731

Extract

It has not, I think, been generally realised up till now, that Francis Bird was a Catholic. Joseph Gillow includes him in his Biographical Dictionary of the English Catholics but this is a source hardly known to historians of Art and one which recusant historians are hesitant about using because Gillow is sometimes inaccurate. In this case, Gillow may have been able to check his written sources against an accurate family tradition, since Francis Bird was a distant ancestor of his through the marriage of a great-great-grandson, George Thomas Ferrers, to Mary Gillow of Hammersmith. Francis Bird was the leading sculptor whose career bridges the gap between the age of Gibbons and the age of Rysbrack. It is clear that he had a large practice and must have made free use of assistants. He appears to have had a good continental training, though its details are somewhat obscure.

The main source for Francis Bird's life is one of the manuscript notebooks of George Vertue, the eighteenth-century engraver, himself a Catholic. He recorded in these the chief events in the world of London artists from September 1722 to August 1754. Vertue's notes were not intended for publication, and his information came either at first hand or from those who knew the artists personally. He states that when Francis Bird died, he left six children, one of them being a son who was aged fifteen at his father's death. C.R.S. sources have now enabled us to identify most of the children and grandchildren. I am most grateful to Sister Francis Agnes Onslow, O.S.F., of Goodings, for allowing me to take over the relevant part of her Bird and Chapman family tree, when we found that we were working in parallel, and it is reproduced here as a first draft so that others may fill in the gaps and make the necessary corrections. I hope to give the Chapman part of the family tree in a subsequent note.