Banks, Thomas

Banks, Thomas, 1735–1805, English neoclassical sculptor, studied at the Royal Academy. A traveling scholarship enabled him to study in Rome from 1772 to 1779. In 1781 he went to Russia, where Catherine II bought his Cupid Catching a Butterfly and commissioned his Armed Neutrality. On his return to England he executed numerous monuments and portrait busts; many are in English churches. Monuments to Isaac Watts, Sir Eyre Coote, and William Woollett are in Westminster Abbey.

See his Annals (ed. by C. F. Bell, 1938).

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