Born at Norton, Derbyshire, Chantrey was initially apprenticed to a wood carver/gilder named Ramsay. John Raphael Smith, the prominent mezzotint engraver, was a frequent visitor to Ramsay's shop. He gave Chantrey drawing lessons so Chantrey started to paint portraits. In 1809, he exhibited a Head of Satan at the Royal Academy, which led to commissions to make busts of Nelson and other admirals for Greenwich Hospital. A well-chosen marriage to his cousin Ann Wale brought £10,000 to help to establish a good studio and purchase several houses.
Chantrey achieved his first major success with a bust of the radical reformer, John Horne Tooke (1811), and thereafter received commissions for portrait busts, monuments and full-length portrait statues, including George Washington, Boston, USA (1826), William IV, Trafalgar Square (1829), and Sir Thomas Munro, Madras (1838). Among his many statues and monuments are the Sleeping Children (1817) in Lichfield Cathedral, a series of portraits in St Paul's Cathedral (including Gillespie and Heber) and in Westminster Abbey (including James Watt and Stamford Raffles), William Pitt in Hanover Square and George IV in Trafalgar Square (made originally for Marble Arch). A Queen Victoria is in the National Portrait Gallery. His George Washington is in Boston State House, USA.
In 1875, the Royal Academy received under Chantrey's will, a vast sum of money - £ 105,000. This was invested by five trustees, and the income each year was handed over to the Academy to purchase works of art - painting and sculpture - executed within the shores of Great Britain. The idea was to build up a national collection of British Art.
John Fuller commissioned Chantrey to sculpt a bust to be placed in St Thomas church in Brightling. Completed in 1819 it shows Fuller in a "Romanesque pose" complete with toga. "Beneath this is a plaque by Henry Rouw with the inscription: 'Utile nihil quod non honestrum'--Nothing is of use which is not honest. The choice of Chantrey to make the bust yet again illustrates how Fuller's great wealth enabled him to employ the very best of craftsmen." Huchinson, pp 94-95
