[citation needed] Chantrey was born at Jordanthorpe[4] near Norton (then a Derbyshire village, now a suburb of Sheffield), where his family had a small farm.

[5] His father, who also dabbled in carpentry and wood-carving, died when Francis was twelve;[6] and his mother remarried, leaving him without a clear career to follow.

[9] In 1802, Chantrey paid £50 to buy himself out of his apprenticeship with Ramsay[10] and immediately set up a studio as a portrait artist in Sheffield, which allowed him a reasonable income.

[5] In 1809, the architect Daniel Asher Alexander commissioned him to make four monumental plaster busts of the admirals Duncan, Howe, Vincent and Nelson for the Royal Naval Asylum at Greenwich, for which he received £10 each.

[15][20] The subjects included Horne Tooke and Sir Francis Burdett, two political figures he greatly admired; his early mentor John Raphael Smith, and Benjamin West.

[23] In 1828 Chantrey set up his own foundry in Eccleston Place, not far from his house and studio, where large-scale works in bronze, including equestrian statues, could be cast.

[21] More recently, Margaret Whinney wrote that Chantrey "had a great gift for characterisation, his ability to render the softness of flesh was much admired" and that "though compelled by the fashion of the day to produce, on occasions, classicizing works, his robust common sense and his enormous talent is better displayed in works which combine an almost classical simplicity of form with naturalism in presentation".

[37] One of his most famous works was The Sleeping Children, a monument to two girls of the Robinson family, depicting them asleep in one another's arms, the younger holding a bunch of snowdrops.

[38] Another popular work, much reproduced, was a small statue, made for Woburn Abbey of the young Louisa, Lady Russell, depicted cradling a dove.

He was buried in a tomb constructed by his assistant James Heffernan in the churchyard of his native village, Norton in Derbyshire (now a suburb of Sheffield).

[43] By his will, dated 31 December 1840, Chantrey (who had no children) left his whole residuary personal estate after the decease or on the second marriage of his widow (less certain specified annuities and bequests) in trust for the president and trustees of the Royal Academy (or in the event of its dissolution to such society as might take its place), the income to be devoted to the encouragement of British painting and sculpture, by "the purchase of works of fine art of the highest merit ... that can be obtained."

The prices to be paid were to be "liberal," and no sympathy for an artist or his family was to influence the selection or the purchase of works, which were to be acquired solely on the ground of intrinsic merit.

Conditions were made as to the exhibition of the works, in the confident expectation that the government or the country would provide a suitable gallery for their display; and an annual sum of £300 and £50 was to be paid to the president and the secretary of the Royal Academy respectively, for the discharge of their duties in carrying out the provisions of the will.

Initially the works acquired were shown at the Victoria and Albert Museum, but in 1898 the Royal Academy arranged with the treasury, on behalf of the government, for the transfer of the collection to the National Gallery of British Art, which had been erected by Sir Henry Tate at Millbank.