In 1797 Flaxman was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy, in 1800 an Academician, and in 1810, when a Professor of Sculpture was added to the other professors of the Academy, he was appointed to the office. His lectures have been published. The friezes on the Covent Garden Theatre were all designed by Flaxman, and he executed the figure of Comedy himself. His last work was making designs for the exterior decoration of Buckingham Palace, which would have been entirely under his direction and partly executed by him if he had lived.
His wife died in 1820, and her loss was a grief from which he could not recover; she had been a great advantage to him, and he had depended much upon her sympathy and counsel. Flaxman was a singularly pure man, and so attractive in manner that he was the friend of old and young alike.
Sir Richard Westmacott succeeded Flaxman as Professor at the Royal Academy; he said: "But the greatest of modern sculptors was our illustrious countryman, John Flaxman, who not only had all the fine feeling of the ancient Greeks (which Canova in a degree possessed), but united to it a readiness of invention and a simplicity of design truly astonishing. Though Canova was his superior in the manual part, high finishing, yet in the higher qualities, poetical feeling and invention, Flaxman was as superior to Canova as was Shakespeare to the dramatists of his day."
But the perfection of the results of the study of Canova and others who endeavored to raise sculpture to its ancient glory was seen in the Dane, BERTEL THORWALDSEN (1770-1844), who was born in Copenhagen. The descent of this artist has been traced to memorable sources in two quite distinct ways. Those who claim that the Norsemen discovered America relate that during their stay upon this coast a child was born, from whom Thorwaldsen's descent can be distinctly followed. The learned genealogists of Iceland say that his ancestors were descended from Harald Hildetand, King of Denmark, who, in the eighth century, was obliged to flee, first to Norway and then to Iceland, and that one of his descendants, Oluf Paa, in the twelfth century, was a famous wood-carver. But this much is certain: in the fourteenth century there lived in Southern Iceland a wealthy man, whose family and descendants were much honored. One of these, Thorvald Gottskalken, a pastor, had two sons and but a small fortune; so he sent his sons to Copenhagen, where one became a jeweller and died young; the other, who was a wood-carver, was the father of the artist, whose mother was Karen Gröulund, the daughter of a Jutland peasant.