John Charles Felix Rossi

John Charles Felix Rossi RA (8 March 1762 – 21 February 1839), often simply known as Charles Rossi, was an English sculptor.

Rossi was born on 8 March 1762 at Nottingham, where his father Ananso, an Italian from Siena, was a quack doctor According to some sources the family later moved to Mountsorrel in Leicestershire, but by 1776, they were living at 9, Haymarket, in London, where the sculptor Giovanni Battista Locatelli, who had just arrived from Italy, came to lodge with them. Some time later, when Locatelli had moved on, and was occupying premises in Union Street, near the Middlesex Hospital, Rossi became his pupil. On completing his apprenticeship he remained with his master for wages of 18 shillings a week, until he found more lucrative employment at Coade and Seeley's artificial stone works at Lambeth.

Rossi entered the Royal Academy Schools in 1781. He won the silver medal in November of that year, and in 1784 the gold medal for a group showing Venus conducting Helen to Paris. In 1785 he won the travelling studentship, and went to Rome for three years, during which he executed a Mercury in marble, and a reclining figure of Eve.

By 1788, following his return from Italy, he was modelling figures for the Derby porcelain factory; his name is recorded in connection with figures ordered by the clockmaker Benjamin Vulliamy, some of them based on Vulliamy's own drawings. In around 1790 he went into business in partnership with John Bingley, a London mason, producing work in a form of terracotta or artificial stone. Their works included the statues of Music and Dancing for the Assembly Rooms at Leicester (1796). Rossi later told Joseph Farington that he had lost a large amount money through this enterprise. The partnership with Bingley was formally dissolved in December 1800.

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