Marchant, Nathaniel
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- Marchant, Nathaniel
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(c.1730 - 1816), gem-engraver; awarded prizes at the SA 1761, 1762, 1764; studied under Edward Burch in London; exh. SA 1765 - 72 from London and 1773 - 4 from Rome; exh. RA 1781 - 5 from Rome and 1789 - 1811 from London; ARA 1791; RA 1809; engr. to the Royal Mint 1797; FSA 1801.
1773 - 88 Rome (Jan. 1773 - 2 Sep. 1788) with visits to Naples (1775, 1786 - 7); Florence, Venice (20 Sep. 1788)
Already over forty and an established gem-engraver, Marchant set out for Rome late in 1772, his patron the 4th Duke of Marlborough helping him with his expenses.1 He sought to establish himself in Rome, the centre of trade in ancient gems and the richest market for modern engravers. He arrived in January 1773,2 and at Easter was living on the Strada Paolina; in 1774 he moved to the Palazzo Piombini in the Via Babuino (near the gem-engraver Costanzi), and the painters Solomon Delane and Henry Tresham shared the same address, respectively in 1774 - 5 and 1778 - 9; finally in 1786 Marchant moved to a palazzo in the Strada Felice, once Piranesi's home and then belonging to his son Francesco.3 Marchant appears to have spent nearly all his time in Rome, though he visited Naples in 1775 and 1786 - 7, Florence and Venice, and in April 1784 he went to Tivoli with James Barry.4
Within a year of his arrival Father Thorpe remarked that Marchant's growing reputation was likely to equal Pichler's.5 Unlike Pichler, Marchant deliberately concentrated on intaglio engraving from antiquities. In 1774, for example, he sent for exhibition at the SA a head of Antinous, 'after the original in the Villa Albano'; many of his subjects came from the new Pio Clementino museum, and later he stressed that the most distinguished province of the art he professed lay in the choice of subjects from those estimable remains of ancient art, of which he was the first Englishman to have examined on the spot, including the very considerable discoveries made while he was in Rome.6 He was a hard worker, whom Flaxman later classified as one of the 'worthy men who set a better example' to visiting artists.7
Marchant enjoyed the most distinguished patronage. Among his few portraits were those of Pope Pius VI in 1781, and the Empress Catherine II of Russia in 1788 (from a painting) for King Stanislaus II, as well as Emma, later Lady Hamilton (1786 - 7). He undertook commissions for the Duke of Gloucester and the Countess of Albany (the Young Pretender's wife). Antiquarians such as Charles Townley and Richard Payne Knight, the painter Philipp Hackert and the sculptor Thomas Banks were among his admirers, but most of his business came through British travellers. Lord Herbert (later 11th Earl of Pembroke) met him in September 1779, describing him as 'an English Sculptor, much employed by the Duke of Marlborough, who has great merit, very modest and many Judges reckon him the first in his profession.'8 The next year, when he was commissioning an intaglio for his mother, Lord Herbert told her 'you know [Marchant] is a rigid moralist as to his plighted word, & nothing could have persuaded him to have thrown aside some other commissions, but his devotion to you & friendship for me'.9 In 1788 Lord Gardenstone wrote that Marchant, 'a sculpture engraver, with an open generosity of heart, is great in his profession'.(10) By then Marchant was about to return home; in April 1788 he told his friend Flaxman that he would shortly be in England 'with a large collection of plaisters'.(11) Pacetti recorded his departure from Rome on 2 September 1788,12 and he was presumably the 'Mons. Marchant' who arrived in Venice on 20 September.(13)
Soon after his return Charles Long met him in London and was not impressed: 'that such a driveller should have attained to any thing like perfection at an art wch requires taste and judgment is a problem to me'.14 In 1792 Marchant published his Catalogue of one hundred Impressions from Gems, a selection of his Italian work, the frontispiece designed by the Countess Spencer and the subscribers list headed by the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Gloucester. Flaxman was to carve his monument at Stoke Poges church, with the inscription: 'his skill and industry as a gem-engraver had supplied the place of patronage by enabling him to remove to Italy and cultivate an art to which his genius strongly inclined him'.
1. See Marchant 1987. 2. Hayward List, 15, 28. 3. AVR sa: S.Lorenzo in Lucina 1773; S.Maria del Popolo 1774 - 5, 1778 - 85; S.Andrea delle Fratte, 1786 - 8. 4. Marchant 1987, 11, 78. Berry Jnls., 1:23 (Apr. 1784.). 5. Thorpe letters mss (5 Jan., 26 Feb. 1774). 6. See the Advertisement to Marchant, Catalogue of one hundred impressions from Gems [1792]. 7. Add.39780, f.45. 8. Pembroke Papers, 1: 269. 9. Ibid., 383. 10. Gardenstone, 3:155 - 6. 11. Add. 39780, f.41 (Flaxman, 2 Apr. 1788). 12. Pacetti giornale. 13. ASV is 760. 14. Add.36496, f.110 (n.d. [13 May 1789]).