Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Bird, Francis
BIRD, FRANCIS (1667–1731), sculptor, was born in Piccadilly. He was sent when eleven years old to Brussels, and there studied (Walpole) under one Cozins, a sculptor who had been in England. From Flanders he found his way, on foot it is said, to Rome, and worked under Le Gros. At nineteen, ‘scarce remembering his own language,’ he came home, and studied under Gibbons and Cibber. Redgrave gives 1716 as the date of his return, which seems, however, to be a mistake. After another short journey to Rome, performed also on foot, he succeeded to Cibber’s practice and set up for himself. The work which raised his reputation, and which alone maintains it now, was the statue of Dr. Busby for Westminster Abbey. Though not in itself superexcellent, it is yet a marvel of art if we compare it only with other works by the same hand. Bird secured the favour of Christopher Wren, and was largely employed upon the decoration of St. Paul’s. He executed the group thr the pediment of the west end, ‘The Conversion of St. Paul,’ of which Horace Walpole remarks: ‘Any statuary was good enough for an ornament at that height, and a great statuary had been too good.’ The same observation applies to the five figures of apostles which maybe dimly descried upon the roof of either transept. For the statue of Queen Anne which confronts Ludgate Hill Bird received 1,130l. A public statue in London needs to be very bad to attract to its demerits any special attention. The fact, therefore, that our public took peculiar delight in mutilating this group may be attributed rather to the advantage of its position than to its undoubted meanness as a piece of art. It was removed in 1885, and is to be replaced. His monument of Sir Clowdisley Shovell in Westminster Abbey is one of the worst works in the world. It was to this that Pope applied the epithet ‘the bathos of sculpture.’ His work, Nagler says, is barbarous in style and devoid of any charm. He was, however, for a long period at the head of his profession in England, and produced a vast number of statues. Many of these may be seen by the curious in Westminster Abbey. He died in 1731.
[Gent. Mag. vol. i.; Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting, ii. 636; Redgrave's Dict, of Artists of the Eng. School; Nagler's Allgemeines Künstler-Lexikon.]