Behnes Correspondence

Correspondence and papers of the sculptors William Behnes (d. 1864), mostly, and his brother Charles Behnes (d. 1840). As follows:

• (a) numbers 1-99 (1821-1861), letters from William Behnes to various correspondents mostly concerning his work and commissions; numbers 2-55 (1821-1839) are to his brother Charles;
• (b) numbers 100-143 (1819-1861), letters to William Behnes from various correspondents on the same subjects;
• (c) numbers 144-155 (c.1819-1856), miscellaneous papers of William Behnes, including holograph Recollections of his early years (number 144), awards made to him by the Society of Arts (numbers 146-7) and agreements respecting his works;
• (d) numbers 156-179 (c.1822-1867), miscellaneous letters and papers of the Behnes family, of which number 157 (1827) is a letter from Charles Behnes to the artist Percy Williams, numbers 158-166 and 169 (1822-1833) are letters from Williams to Charles Behnes, numbers 172-173 are letters to the sculptor Henry Behnes alias Burlowe (d. 1837), brother of William and Charles, and number 174 is a letter from him.

William Behnes (1795-1864), sculptor, was born in London, the eldest of the three sons of a piano maker, of Hanover, Germany, and his English wife. He was brought up in Dublin, where he attended a public drawing-school. He returned with his family to London and enrolled at the Royal Academy Schools on 23 March 1813, initially planning to be a painter. After he and his brother Henry received lessons in modelling from Peter Francis Chenu, they both turned to sculpture. From the 1820s to the 1840s Behnes was second only to Francis Chantrey as England's most prolific and successful portrait sculptor. He exhibited at the Royal Academy between 1815 and 1863. He excelled in conveying the character of his sitters, as seen for example in his busts of Robert Vernon and Richard Porson (1845). The marble bust of Princess Victoria at the age of ten (1829) radiates a baroque sense of animation. On her accession in 1837 Behnes was appointed sculptor-in-ordinary to Queen Victoria, but he received no further commissions.

His church monuments are relatively few but impressive, including his statue of William Babington (1837, St Paul's Cathedral, London), his high-relief monument to Charlotte Botfield (1825, All Saints' Church, Norton, Northamptonshire). His motif of guardian angels pointing heavenward in the monuments to Esther North (1825, Old Alresford, Hampshire) and John Bourne (1833, St Peter's Church, Stoke-on-Trent) influenced later funerary sculpture. His best-known public monument is of Sir Henry Havelock (1861, Trafalgar Square, London, and Mowbray Park, Sunderland). He died at Middlesex Hospital on 3 January 1864. He was buried on 12 January in Kensal Green Cemetery, London.

Source: Mark Stocker, 'Behnes, William (1791x7-1864)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004. By permission of Oxford University Press - http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/1963.

See note in the Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, vol. 45 (1962-3), p. 5.