Prolific, London-based carver of statues, church monuments and mural tablets who worked for many years in the studio of his brother-in-law John Flaxman, and whose unfinished commissions he completed on the latter’s death in 1826, a notable example being the statue of Robert Burns, 1821–28, originally Regent Road, Edinburgh, now Scottish National Portrait Gallery. His own work was described by Gunnis as ‘uninspired and dull, except when they borrow a Flaxman design’. Surviving independent work includes the colossal figure group in Coade stone on the parapet of General Anderson’s Institution (now a care home for the elderly) in Elgin, Moray, Scotland, dating from 1833. The last known date for Denman is 1847, the year in which he became bankrupt.
Bibliography: R. Gunnis, Dictionary of British Sculptors 1660–1851, London, [1968]; R. McKenzie, Public Sculpture of Edinburgh (2 vols), Liverpool, 2018, vol. 2, pp. 385–90; I. Roscoe et al, A Biographical Dictionary of Sculptors in Britain 1660–1851, New Haven and London, 2009.
Ray McKenzie 2018