ohn Hancock was born in Fulham, London, in 1824, the sixth child of a family of nine. His father John Hancock owned a factory producing rubber products for medical purposes and his mother was Fanny Maria Francis. After his father died in 1835, John was brought up by his uncle Thomas Hancock, who lived at Stoke Newington, North London. Thomas Hancock had discovered the process for the vulcanization of rubber which had brought him a considerable fortune. John's uncle Charles Hancock was an animal painter and may have encouraged him to pursue a career in art. Hancock studied at the Royal Academy Schools from 1842 to c.1844, but was largely self-taught as an sculptor.
In 1843 Hancock exhibited his first work at the Royal Academy. He was introduced to members of the future Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood likely through fellow sculptor Thomas Woolner whom he had met at the Royal Academy Schools. Hancock had met and become friends with Dante Gabriel Rossetti at least by 1846 when Hancock produced a portrait medallion roundel of the youthful Rossetti. In the late-1840s Hancock worked in a studio adjacent to Thomas Woolner's. In 1848 Hancock became a member of the Cyclographic Society, which also included members of the soon to be formed Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and their close associates, including D. G. Rossetti, William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, James Collinson, Frederic George Stephens, Walter Deverell, and the sculptors Thomas Woolner and Alexander Munro. Hancock was briefly involved with setting up publication of The Germ, the magazine associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, although he later withdrew his financial support. At one point when Ford Madox Brown was uncertain he would have his etching ready for the third issue of The Germ he proposed that Hancock should also prepare an etching and whichever was finished in time should be included in this number. Brown completed his etching on time making Hancock's unnecessary, fortunately because Hancock never completed his.
Hancock's first public success as a sculptor was in 1849 when he won the Art Union of London's premium for his bas-relief Christ's Journey to Jerusalem. This work was exhibited at the Royal Academy the same year. Hancock was appointed as one of the commissioners to decide on sculpture for the Great Exhibition planned for 1851. His full-size plaster of Beatrice was favourably reviewed when it was later shown there. On August 30, 1851 he married Eliza Ann Fernley at St. Pancras Old Church, London. In 1857 his bust of Penserosa was bought as a Christmas present by Prince Albert for Queen Victoria. His most important commissions were for the statue of Penserosa in 1861 for the Egyptian Hall of the Mansion House, London, and for a series of bas-reliefs for the National Provincial Bank in Bishopgate, London, executed in 1864-65. These architectural reliefs depicted Agriculture, Navigation, Science, Manufacture, Commerce and The Arts.
Hancock had taught modelling at the Central School of Practical Art from 1854-59: according to Diane Bilbey, a "John Hancock" received a fee from the modelling class of the Female School on 5 January 1856 (290). By 1857 the school had come under the auspices of the Science and Art Department at South Kensington, where it shared a site with the new South Kensington Museum. In 1863 it became the National Art Training School. Hancock exhibited at the Royal Academy nineteen times but ceased to exhibit at there after 1864. He exhibited multiple works at the International Exhibition in London held in South Kensington in 1862. He was a member of the Institute of British Sculptors from c.1861. His last few years are shrouded in mystery although he lived for some time at South Norwood. He died in penury at 35 Grafton Street East, Tottenham Court Road, London, on October 17, 1869. He was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery.
Bibliography
Bilbey, Diane (with Margery Trusted). British Sculpture 1470 to 2000 – A Concise Catalogue of the Collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum. London: V&A Publications, 2002. 290-91.
James, Thomas Beaumont. "John Hancock: Pre-Raphaelite Sculptor?" In Benedict Read and Joanna Barnes, eds. Pre-Raphaelite Sculpture: Nature and Imagination in British Sculpture, 1848-1914. London: Lund Humphries, 1991. 71-76.
"John Hancock." Mapping the Practice and Profession of Sculpture in Britain & Ireland 1851-1951. University of Glasgow History of Art and HATAI, online database 2011 [https://sculpture.gla.ac.uk/mapping/public/view/person.php?id=msib2_1202170267&search=john%20hancock]. Web. 23 March 2024
Read, Benedict. "Was there Pre-Raphaelite Sculpture?" In Leslie Parris Ed. Pre-Raphaelite Papers. London: Tate Gallery Publications, 1984. 97-110.
Ward-Jackson, Philip. Public Sculpture of the City of London. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2003.
Wilkes, Robert. "The case of John Hancock, a neglected Pre-Raphaelite sculptor. In Pre-Raphaelite Reflections. A blog devoted to the PRB. https://dantisamor.wordpress.com/2015/09/20/the-case-of-john-hancock-a-neglected-pre-raphaelite-sculptor/
Created 26 April 2024