James George Bubb - Biography

(1782-1853). Bubb attended the Royal Academy Schools, winning a Silver Medal in 1805. He also worked with J.C.F. Rossi, later claiming that he had given considerable assistance in the carving of Rossi’s tomb of Captain Faulkener in St Paul’s Cathedral. In 1806 he won the Corporation’s competition for the monument to William Pitt the Younger for the Guildhall. The monument was not completed until 1813. Bubb worked for Mrs Coade’s artificial stone factory, and went on to produce his own recipe for architectural terracotta. This was used very extensively on the new London Custom House, opened in 1818. Although deemed unsatisfactory, Bubb proceeded to decorate a large number of buildings in London and Bristol with this material. His most inventive scheme was probably the frieze, illustrating the history of music and the dance from the earliest times to the present, for the Italian Opera House in the Haymarket (1827), of which only fragments have survived. Bubb abandoned his terracotta around 1830, although he was later employed by the firm of Blashfield to model some of their architectural ornaments. At the Royal Academy, Bubb exhibited portrait busts and mythological figures. He also executed a number of church monuments. He was a prolific, but not particularly talented sculptor, rather despised by the rest of the profession. Sources: R. Gunnis, Dictionary of British Sculptors 1660--1851, London, 1968. [CL2003]

The works of James George Bubb: