“The Jamaican commissions of John Bacon the elder

John Bacon’s commission to produce a statue of Admiral Lord Rodney to be located in the main square of Spanish Town Jamaica led to a further 11 requests from senior government officials and wealthy planters over the next decade. I include 5 examples here; three from Spanish Town Cathedral and one each from Kingston Parish Church and St James's Church Montego Bay. The comments on these works come from the pen of the eminent historian of Jamaica, Frank Cundall.

After the Rodney memorial, the monument in the cathedral, Spanish Town, erected to the memory of the Earl of Effingham, governor of Jamaica, and his countess, is the most important and the most beautiful work” by Bacon in Jamaica. It is of marble, and bears the legend "J. Bacon, sculptor, London, 1796." On a base stands an urn, decorated with festoons of flowers, and bearing, under an earl's coronet, the arms of Effingham. Above the urn, hanging on an obelisk which rises from the base of the monument, are represented the Chancellor's seal, the mace and sword in saltire, and the usual emblematic scales. On one side of the monument, clasping the urn, is an elegant female figure personifying Jamaica, bearing the crest of the colony, an alligator passant proper, on her zone. On the other side is a lovely boy, his left hand holding an olive branch, resting on a cornucopia full of tropical fruits, and his right hand upon a shield bearing the arms of Jamaica as granted” by Charles II. The epitaph [is] written” by Bryan Edwards, the historian of the West Indies, and then member of Assembly for Trelawny.

The monument in Kingston Parish Church to Dr. Fortunatus Dwarris, member of the House of Assembly for St. George and his stepdaughter (1792) survived the destruction of the church in 1907 and, represents a recumbent female figure resting on an urn, gazing at an angel conducting the soul of the departed upwards. In it the poetry on the urn descriptive of the scene represented is hardly equal to Bacon's art:

Ascend to Bliss ye gentle Spirits

Where yon Angel soars above:
Their Virtue her Reward Inherits
Crowne'd with Heav'n's eternal love.

Of the monuments in St James Church, Montego Bay, the best is that of Mrs. Rosa Palmer,” by John Bacon, R.A., of the year 1794. It is, after the Rodney and Effingham monuments at Spanish Town, the best work” by Bacon in Jamaica. She to whose memory it was erected, the wife of John Palmer, custos of the parish, died in 1790, aged 72 years. This monument has been for years connected with the legend of Rose Hall, about ten miles to the east of Montego Bay. Into this legend, of cruelty to slaves and murder of her several husbands” by a certain Mrs. Palmer, it is not necessary to enter. Controversies have raged having for their object the identity of the figure on the monument; some maintaining that it was the good, others the bad Mrs. Palmer. As a matter of fact it represents neither, but is merely an emblematic figure, such as Bacon was very fond of putting into his memorials, and in all probability the head on the vase represents the features of Rosa Palmer.

List of John Bacon’s Jamaican works (from Roscoe)

Roscoe Number	Subject	Type	Date	Location
47	John Wolmer (†1729)	Funerary Monument	1789	St. Thomas, Kingston, Jamaica
49	George McFarquhar (†1786)	Funerary Monument	1791	St. James, Montego Bay, Jamaica
56	Dr Fortunatus Dwarris (†1790) and his niece, Anne Neufville (†1782)	Funerary Monument	1792	Kingston, Jamaica
72	Malcolm (†1781) and Eleanor Laing (†1747)	Funerary Monument	1794	St. Thomas, Kingston, Jamaica
74	Rosa Palmer (†1790)	Funerary Monument	1794	St. James, Montego Bay, Jamaica
82	E Prince	Funerary Monument	1795	Port Antonio, Jamaica, WI
96	Thomas, 4th Earl and Catherine, Countess of Effingham (both †1791)	Funerary Monument	1796	Spanish Town Cathedral, Jamaica
105	Anne Williamson (†1794)	Funerary Monument	1798	Spanish Town Cathedral, Jamaica
108	Richard Batty (†1796)	Funerary Monument	1798	Spanish Town Cathedral, Jamaica
110	Francis Rigby Brodbelt (†1795)	Funerary Monument	1799	Spanish Town Cathedral, Jamaica
112	Mary Carr (†1798)	Funerary Monument ?	1799	Kingston Cathedral, Jamaica
150	Admiral Lord Rodney	Statue	1786-1790	Spanish Town, Jamaica

The Jamaican commissions of John Bacon the elder

Tim Willasey-Wilsey, Assistant Editor of Military and Colonial History; Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the Centre for Defence Studies, King’s College, London © TAWW (2015)

List of John Bacon’s Jamaican works (from Roscoe)

Further reading