— Sylvester, Wax Modeller
(d. 1791)
Wax Modeller
From A Dictionary of Irish Artists 1913
He was practising in Dublin in 1791, at No. 31 College Green, as a modeller of "likenesses in wax, baked clay, or plaster of Paris." He also did whole-length figures of children. He was perhaps the "Silvester," of Houndsditch, London, who exhibited six wax models at the Free Society in London in 1782.
He died in College Green on 20th April, 1791. After his death his widow exhibited, before removing them to London, his "celebrated cabinet of wax figures representing, with exact similitude and more than Promethean spirit all the crowned heads and some of the most celebrated characters of the present century in Europe." The artist, she says, "was honoured by the approbation of the first connoisseurs of Europe." The "Dublin Chronicle" (30th April, 1791) says: "It is intended by the affectionate widow of the late Mr. Sylvester to erect a handsome monument over his remains in this country, with a proper epitaph of his extraordinary merits. Fifty guineas have been already bid for his unexampled figure of Baron Trenck and refused."
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