Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881), 1st Earl of Beaconsfield
Benjamin Disraeli was a British Statesman and novelist who was twice Prime Minister (1868, 1874-80). He played a central role in the creation of the modern Conservative Party. Disraeli is remembered for his influential voice in world affairs, his political battles with the Liberal Party leader William Ewart Gladstone, and his one-nation conservatism or ‘Tory democracy’.
We can claim a local link with him because at times he held his cabinet meetings at the Royal Bath Hotel. According to Home and Abroad, Merton Russell-Cotes purchased this bust from the sale of items from the Beaconsfield Club in London during the 1880s.
In 1813, William Behnes enrolled at the Royal Academy schools, intending to train as a painter. After he had received lessons in modelling from Peter Francis Chenu (1760-1834), however, he turned to sculpture. He was awarded a gold medal by the Society of Arts in 1819 for inventing ‘an instrument for transferring points to marble’. From the 1820s to the 1840s Behnes was one of the country’s most prolific and successful portrait sculptors and, in 1837, he was appointed sculptor-in-ordinary to Queen Victoria. His pupils included noted sculptors George Frederic Watts, Thomas Woolner and naturalist Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins.
