Thomas Scheemakers
Thomas Scheemakers (c. 1740 – 15 July 1808), or Thomas Scheemaeckers according to his own signature, was a sculptor in late 18th-century London. He was the last of the Scheemaeckers family of sculptors originally from Antwerp. Several of his works are held by the Victoria and Albert Museum and can be found in parish churches around England. Life Thomas was born Thomas-Henry Scheemaeckers, son of sculptor Henry Scheemakers of London then Paris, nephew of sculptor Peter Scheemakers The Younger (1691-1781) of London, and grandson of sculptor Pieter Scheemaeckers of Antwerp. Parents, Birth and Baptism Based on the inscription in St Pancras churchyard where he was later buried, giving his age in 1808 as 68 years, Thomas-Henry was born around 1740, and therefore was born in Paris, probably at his parents' home on the rue Meslay. Thomas-Henry's father Henry Scheemakers (c.1686-1748) had been born in Flanders to the Antwerp sculptor Pieter Scheemaeckers and his wife Catharine van der Hulst. Henry may have worked as a journeyman in Copenhagen for Johann Adam Sturmberg, before settling in Westminster in the early 1720s. He was certainly in London by 1726, in which year Henry Scheemakers, Statuary, is recorded as taking as apprentice John van