John Flaxman was an English draughtsman, designer and sculptor. He was born in 1755 at York, and died in 1826. His earliest notions of art were derived from casts in the shop of his father, who sold plaster figures, from many of which the young Flaxman made models in clay. In 1770 he was admitted a student at the Royal Academy, and from 1775 he worked for 12 years as a designer to the pottery firm of Wedgwood. In 1787 he went to Italy where he remained for seven years, returning to England in 1794.