Stanley Nicholson Babb (1874–1957)

Sculptor, born at Plymouth, where he studied at the local school of art before going on to the RCA and the RA Schools, winning, in 1901, the RA Gold Medal and Travelling Scholarship. He showed at the RA, 1898–1945; the RSA, 1913, 1917 and 1924; and the Royal Glasgow Institute of Fine Art, 1906–40. In 1905 he became a member of the RBS. His Jupiter and the Princess of Phoenicia and his Garden Fountain are illustrated in RBS Modern British Sculpture (1939, pls. 8, 9). For Aston Webb’s V&A façade, he carved figures of Thomas Gainsborough and George Romney, 1905. His other public commissions include the South African War Memorial for Grahamstown, South Africa, 1906; a Memorial Tablet to Captain Scott and his companions, St Paul’s Cathedral, London, 1915; and sculpture for First World War memorials at Tunbridge Wells and Bridlington, and for Coutts and Co, Holborn, London.

Bibliography: D. Buckman, Artists in Britain since 1945 (2 vols: A–L, M–Z), Bristol, 2006; T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of Kensington and Chelsea with Westminster South-West, Watford, 2023, pp. 168; T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of South London, Liverpool, 2007, pp. 24–25, 165; A. Graves, The Royal Academy of Arts: a Complete Dictionary of Contributors and their Works from its Foundation in 1769 to 1904, London, 1905–6 (8 vols); Mapping Sculpture; Victorian Web.

Terry Cavanagh November 2022

Stephan Balkenhol (b. 1957)

German sculptor based in Meisenthal, France. He studied under Sigmar Polke and Nam June Paik at the Hamburg School of Fine Arts (1976–82), but rejected their Minimalist and Conceptual approaches in favour of making representations of the human figure that are either carved from wood or cast in bronze, and usually painted. His work has been exhibited throughout the world, and he has carried out numerous public commissions, including: Man with Fish, Chicago (2000); Eiserner Man, Cleves Zoo, Germany (2004); Sphaera, Salzburg (2007); and Richard Wagner, Leipzig (2013), all in bronze. His Everyman, a painted bronze figure on a galvanised steel tower, stands at the entrance to Waverley Court, Edinburgh (2006–07).

Bibliography: Stephen Friedman Gallery – Stephan Balkenhol; R. McKenzie, Public Sculpture of Edinburgh (2 vols), Liverpool, 2018, vol. 1, pp. 114–16.

Ray McKenzie 2018

Percival Ball (1845–1900)

Sculptor born in Westminster. He was a pupil of Henry Weekes. In 1863, shortly before Ball entered the RA Schools, the head of Lambeth School of Art, John Sparkes, appointed him pupil-teacher in charge of his modelling class. During Ball’s time there, Doulton and Co commissioned the school to produce a series of terracotta heads (destroyed in the early 1950s) for the pediment over the main entrance to its Lambeth potteries building: Sparkes designed the heads, allotting the modelling to Ball (with assistance from George Tinworth, then a promising young student). Doulton also produced the two terracotta figure groups representing Instruction that Ball designed for the pediment of the V&A Museum lecture theatre in 1868. Ball enjoyed considerable success at the RA Schools, in 1865 winning its gold medal and scholarship of £25 for the best historical group in sculpture, as well as a silver medal for a model from life. From 1865 to 1882, he showed 24 pieces at the RA summer exhibitions, comprising mostly portrait busts, with some statuettes, reliefs and fancy pieces. In c.1870, he went to Paris and Munich and lastly to Rome, where he lived and worked for about eight years. In 1884, for health reasons (he suffered from asthma and bronchitis) he emigrated to Australia where he established a successful working practice. In 1898, he was commissioned to produce a relief panel, Phryne before Praxiteles, for the Art Gallery of New South Wales and was sent to London to superintend its casting in bronze at J.W. Singer & Sons. Tragically, his poor health was exacerbated by the London winter and Ball died there of heart failure on 4 April 1903. The casting of his panel was completed after his death and installed on the front of the gallery building in 1903.

Bibliography: S. Beattie, The New Sculpture, New Haven and London, 1983, p. 18; T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of Kensington and Chelsea with Westminster South-West, Watford, 2023, pp. 164–65; T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of South London, Liverpool, 2007, p. 355; Mapping Sculpture; K. Scarlett, ‘Ball, Percival (1845–1900)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography.

Terry Cavanagh November 2022

A.W. Banks

Architectural sculptor. He carved figurative sculptures for the churches of St Katherine, Westway and Primula Street, Hammersmith, for J.R. Atkinson, 1958–59, and St Thomas, Kensal Road, for Romilly Craze, 1967.

Bibliography: T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of Kensington and Chelsea with Westminster South-West, Watford, 2023, p. 221; B. Cherry and N. Pevsner, London 3: North West (The Buildings of England), London, 1991, pp. 204, 462.

Terry Cavanagh November 2022

Tomás Bañuelos (b. 1958)

Sculptor born in Fabero in the province of León in Spain. He trained in the workshop of Higinio Vázquez in Madrid and later became Professor of Sculpture at the Faculty of Fine Arts in the Complutense University of Madrid. He retains a workshop in Fabero. He and a team of assistants produced the over 100 sculptures, paintings and sketches used as props for the Spanish director, Fernando Trueba’s, 2012 French-language film, L’artiste et son modèle. His statue of Christopher Columbus, 1992, is in Belgrave Square.

Bibliography: ‘Bañuelos Ramón, Tomás – Profesor titular escuela universitaria’, Universidad Complutense Madrid; T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of Kensington and Chelsea with Westminster South-West, Watford, 2023, pp. 265–66; T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of South London, Liverpool, 2007, p. xxi; V. Silván, ‘Tomás Bañuelos, un escultor de película’, 1 August 2011, El Mundo.

Terry Cavanagh November 2022

James Barr (1911–1969)

Sculptor born in Glasgow. At the age of fifteen he became an apprentice to Benno Schotz, who claims to have taken him on because he was so impressed by his handwriting. He attended evening classes at Glasgow School of Art, and later enrolled as a full-time student under Archibald Dawson, winning numerous prizes, including the prestigious Haldane Scholarship. In 1938 he became a member of staff, but cutbacks during the Second World War forced him to seek employment as a riveter until he was able to return to the School as an assistant to Benno Schotz in 1945. He exhibited regularly at the Royal Scottish Academy from 1934 until his death, and was elected ARSA in 1963. For the National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh, he carved a series of relief panels – Signing, Dictation, Braille, Writing, Divine Inspiration and Letter-carving – on the north and south wings (1953–55). The V&A Dundee has the maquettes for Signing and Braille (A.11-2016).

Bibliography: P. McEwan, The Dictionary of Scottish Art and Architecture, Ballater, Aberdeenshire, 2004; R. McKenzie, Public Sculpture of Edinburgh (2 vols), Liverpool, 2018, vol. 1, pp. 153–54; B. Schotz, Bronze in my Blood, Edinburgh, 1981, p. 106.

Ray McKenzie 2018

Harry Bates (1850–1899)

Sculptor born in Stevenage, Hertfordshire. Bates began as a stone-carving apprentice and then an employee at the firm of Farmer & Brindley. From 1879 to 1881 he was at the South London Technical Art School where he was briefly one of Jules Dalou’s students and in December 1881 entered the RA Schools, winning, in 1883, the gold medal and travelling scholarship for his relief panel, Socrates Teaching the People in the Agora (marble version 1886, University of Manchester). Bates worked in Paris, 1883–85, where, on Dalou’s advice, he took tuition from Rodin. Following his return to London, he worked, 1888–93, with Hamo Thornycroft on the carved decorations for John Belcher’s Institute of Chartered Accountants’ building in the City of London. Quickly achieving recognition as one of the leading practitioners of what became known as the New Sculpture, his oeuvre spanned most genres of sculpture from door knockers to imaginative reliefs to portraits to public monuments, and he worked in a wide range of materials. His Mors Janua Vitae (RA 1899; Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool) exemplifies his use of diverse materials – bronze, ivory and mother-of-pearl – in a single work. Two important early sculptures were Hounds in Leash (bronze; RA 1889; Gosford House, East Lothian; reduction at Birmingham Art Gallery) and Pandora (marble; RA 1890; Chantrey Bequest purchase 1891; Tate). Their success contributed to his election to ARA in 1892. In what were to be the final years of his short life, Bates was working simultaneously on three major public commissions, equestrian statues of Lord Roberts and the Marquess of Lansdowne for Calcutta (Kolkata) and an enthroned Queen Victoria for Dundee. Each comprised a principal free-standing figure and a pedestal richly decorated in figurative relief panels. Bates’s death from heart failure was supposed by his obituarists to have been brought on by the overwork and stress of this heavy workload; the Queen Victoria and Marquess of Lansdowne statues both being unveiled after his death. Such was the admiration for Bates’s statue of Lord Roberts that two posthumous versions were produced – with the consent of his widow – one for Kelvingrove Park, Glasgow (unveiled August 1916), the second for Horse Guards Parade, London (unveiled May 1924).

Bibliography: The Artist, December 1897, pp. 579–88; The Athenaeum, 4 February 1899, p. 152 (obit.); S. Beattie, The New Sculpture, New Haven and London, 1983; T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of Kensington and Chelsea with Westminster South-West, Watford, 2023, pp. 94–95; Illustrated London News, 4 February 1899, p. 151 (obit.); R. McKenzie, Public Sculpture of Glasgow, Liverpool, 2002, pp. 231–34; Mapping Sculpture; G.T. Noszlopy, Public Sculpture of Birmingham, Liverpool, 1998, pp. 49–50; Pall Mall Gazette, 31 January 1899, p. 7 (obit.); M. Stocker, ‘Bates, Harry (1850–1899)’, ODNB, (2004), 2008; Royal Academy of Arts website; The Times, 1 February 1899, p. 6 (obit.); P. Ward-Jackson, Public Sculpture of the City of London, Liverpool, 2003, pp. 158–59; P. Ward-Jackson, Public Sculpture of Historic Westminster. Volume 1, Liverpool, 2011, pp. 68–70; T. Wyke, Public Sculpture of Greater Manchester, Liverpool, 2004, pp. 100–01.

Terry Cavanagh February 2023

Heinrich Baucke (1875–1915)

German sculptor, mainly of portrait statues and busts in a neo-baroque style. He was born in Düsseldorf and studied, 1891–1900, in the city’s academy of fine art under Karl Janssen. Baucke’s first success was The Victorious Boxer, a bronze statuette, 1897, now in the Kunsthalle, Düsseldorf. In 1903, he moved to Berlin and won several commissions from Kaiser Wilhelm II, including, for the terrace of the pleasure garden of the royal palace at Berlin, the statue of Wilhelm III. In 1907, the Kaiser presented a replica of the statue, via his cousin King Edward VII, to the people of Britain; this was erected outside Kensington Palace. Other significant commissions include a bust of Wilhelm I (1900) for his monument at Rotthausen; and statues of The Electress Louise Henriette of Orange-Nassau (1904), Moers castle, and King Frederick I of Prussia and Queen Sophie Charlotte (1909), Charlottenburg Gate, Berlin. He also executed marble busts of Helmuth von Moltke and Otto von Bismarck (Kaiser Wilhelm Museum, Krefeld). Baucke died on 12 or 13 April 1915 in Ratingen.

Bibliography: T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of Kensington and Chelsea with Westminster South-West, Watford, 2023, pp. 361–64; Oxford Art Online – Benezit Dictionary of Artists; Wikipedia (German).

Terry Cavanagh November 2022

Frank Baxter (1865–1933)

Sculptor born in Sutton, Lancashire. After attending Eton College, he began working as a manager in the family chemical works. At some date in the 1890s, having decided to become a sculptor, he went to Paris and studied with Denis Puech and Jean-Auguste Dampt. Baxter and his wife and son are recorded as living in Victoria Road, Kensington, from c.1900 to c.1922. He exhibited at the RA (5 times), the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, and the Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts. At the Salon des Artistes Français in Paris in 1926, he exhibited American Bison. The National Portrait Gallery has his bust of James Gairdner (plaster, 1900; bronze, 1924).

Bibliography: T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of Kensington and Chelsea with Westminster South-West, Watford, 2023, p. 226; Mapping Sculpture; Oxford Art Online – Benezit Dictionary of Artists.

Terry Cavanagh November 2022

William Baxter (1855–1927)

Builder, amateur sculptor and local politician, who served on the Town Council of Leith from 1891, and of Edinburgh after the amalgamation of the two towns in 1920 (which he opposed). He took a special interest in public housing schemes and the improvement of the tramway system. In its report on his death, the Scotsman noted that ‘[o]ne of his recreations was modelling in stucco’, and that in this medium he ‘carried out devices in which a grotesque humour was expressed’. It is on this basis that he may be identified as the author of the relief panel, The Valour of German Culture 1914, 1915, on 128 Pitt Street, Leith.

Bibliography: R. McKenzie, Public Sculpture of Edinburgh (2 vols), Liverpool, 2018, vol. 2, pp. 179–80; The Scotsman, 17 June 1927, p. 8.

Ray McKenzie 2018

Gilbert (William) Bayes (1872–1953)

Sculptor and teacher, born in North London. He studied at the City and Guilds School, Finsbury, 1891–96, before winning an LCC Scholarship which enabled him to attend the RA Schools, 1896–99, where he was taught by Thomas Brock, Harry Bates and, more importantly, George Frampton, who became his lifelong friend. Bayes won the Armitage Prize for composition in 1897, a Silver Medal for life modelling in 1898 and, in 1899, the Gold Medal, Landseer Scholarship and £200 travelling scholarship which funded three months in Italy and nine months in Paris (where he showed at the 1900 Exposition Universelle). He joined the Art Workers’ Guild in 1896, serving as Master in 1925. He taught at Camberwell School of Art, 1906–12. At the outbreak of the First World War, Bayes volunteered for service but was classed as medically unfit; he was later called up following the lowering of the medical requirements, but was exempted because of the importance of his 1916 commission for the Australian War Memorial – two colossal equestrian groups, Offerings of Peace and Offerings of War, finally erected in 1926 in front of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney. In 1922 Bayes was made an Honorary Member of the Société des Artistes Français, and won bronze and gold medals at the Paris Salon in 1929 and 1939 respectively. He was vice-president of the RBS, 1929–37, and president, 1938–44; in 1931 he was awarded the RBS medal for his artificial stone frieze, Drama Through the Ages, for the exterior of the Saville Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue. Bayes was particularly influenced by Frampton and Alfred Gilbert and, like them, was interested in polychromy in sculpture, the use of mixed materials and, especially in his early years, in Arthurian, Wagnerian and medieval subjects; the Assyrian relief sculptures in the British Museum were also highly influential. In 1905, Bayes executed figures of the architects Sir William Chambers and Sir Charles Barry for Aston Webb’s V&A façade. He produced many designs in polychrome stoneware for Doulton, 1923–39, examples of which may be seen in two of his most important public commissions in the UK, The Queen of Time Clock (blue faience and stoneware decorations for the central gilt bronze figure), 1931, over the main entrance to Selfridges, Oxford Street, and a pair of friezes, 1939, for Doulton House, Lambeth (following demolition in 1979, Pottery through the Ages went to the V&A, Dutch Potters arriving at Lambeth to Ironbridge Gorge Museum, Shropshire).

Bibliography: S. Beattie, The New Sculpture, New Haven and London, 1983; T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of Kensington and Chelsea with Westminster South-West, Watford, 2023, p. 168; T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of South London, Liverpool, 2007, pp. 23–24, 25, 94, 106–07, 165, 355–57; L. Irvine and P. Atterbury, Gilbert Bayes, Sculptor, 1872–1953, Shepton Beauchamp, Somerset, 1998; F. Lloyd et al, Public Sculpture of Outer South and West London, Liverpool, 2011, pp. 55–56; R. McKenzie, Public Sculpture of Glasgow, Liverpool, 2002, pp. 22–23; Mapping Sculpture; M.H. Spielmann, British Sculpture and Sculptors of To-day, London, 1901; G.T. Noszlopy, Public Sculpture of Birmingham, Liverpool, 1998, p. 15; G.T. Noszlopy and F. Waterhouse, Public Sculpture of Herefordshire, Shropshire and Worcestershire, Liverpool, 2010, pp. 35–36; J. Seddon et al, Public Sculpture of Sussex, Liverpool, 2014, p. 70; T. Wyke, Public Sculpture of Greater Manchester, Liverpool, 2004, pp. 66–67.

Terry Cavanagh January 2023

William Francis Beattie (1886–1918)

Born in Hawick, Scotland, the son of the sculptor and plaster worker Thomas Beattie (1861–1933), he was educated at George Watson’s School (now George Watson’s College), Edinburgh, and Edinburgh College of Art. He was associated with the town planner and biologist Patrick Geddes, for whom he constructed a model of the University of Edinburgh building (now lost) for inclusion in his ‘Masque of Medieval and Modern Learning’ in 1912, and from c.1912 to 1914 was active in the Arts and Crafts collective at Dean Studios, Lynedoch Place, Edinburgh. He designed the relief panel, St George and the Dragon (carved by John Marshall), for St George’s School for Girls, Ravelston, Edinburgh (1914). His most important surviving work is the bronze equestrian Common Riding Memorial in Hawick, Scottish Borders, which celebrates the routing by a Hawick youth of a band of English marauders in the ‘Hornshole Incident’ of 1514. It was unveiled in June 1914, and within a few weeks Beattie was mobilised to serve in the First World War as a lieutenant in the Yeomanry. He was awarded the Military Cross for bravery, and died at a Casualty Clearing Station in October 1918.

Bibliography: W.T. Johnston, Dictionary of Scottish Artists (c.2000), Scottish National Library, ref CD-ROM.585, citing Anon., Hawick and the War: a pictorial record (Hawick: Hawick News Office, n.d. [1915-19]); R. McKenzie, Public Sculpture of Edinburgh (2 vols), Liverpool, 2018, vol. 1, pp. 141–42.

Ray McKenzie 2018

William Behnes (1795–1864)

Sculptor and painter. Born in London, the son of a piano maker from Hanover and his English wife. Part of his childhood was spent in Ireland, where he started attending drawing school. In 1813 he entered the Royal Academy. At this time, he was painting portraits on vellum. It was the example of the sculptor Peter Chenu which persuaded William Behnes, and his brother Henry, who later changed his name to Burlowe, to adopt the sculptor’s profession. In 1819, Behnes was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Society of Arts for the invention of ‘an instrument for transferring points to marble’. He first exhibited at the RA in 1815. Behnes’s production consists largely of portrait busts and statues. His many church monuments are modest in scale, but occasionally include emotive figures, such as the mourning son, in the Monument to Mrs Botfield at Norton, Northants. In 1837, Behnes, who had sculpted Princess Victoria’s portrait in 1828, became her Sculptor in Ordinary, although this did not lead to further commissions. His statue of Sir Henry Havelock in Trafalgar Square (1861) is reputed to have been the first statue to have been based on a photographic portrait of the subject. Behnes’s extravagant habits reduced him to destitution in his final years. Despite the predominance of portraiture in his œuvre, some ideal and imaginary works by him are recorded, including a Lady Godiva, shown at the Great Exhibition in 1851, a Cupid with Two Doves (London International Exhibition of 1862), and a relief illustrating Shakespeare’s ‘Seven Ages of Man’.

Bibliography: T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of Kensington and Chelsea with Westminster South-West, Watford, 2023, pp. xxiii, xxxii, xxxiii, 220; T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of South London, Liverpool, 2007, p. 60; I. Roscoe et al, A Biographical Dictionary of Sculptors in Britain 1660–1851, New Haven and London, 2009; J. Seddon et al, Public Sculpture of Sussex, Liverpool, 2014, pp. 88–89; P. Usherwood et al, Public Sculpture of North-East England, Liverpool, 2000, p. 183; P. Ward-Jackson, Public Sculpture of the City of London, Liverpool, 2003, pp. xiii–xiv, 322–23; P. Ward-Jackson, Public Sculpture of Historic Westminster. Volume 1, Liverpool, 2011, pp. 297–99.

Philip Ward-Jackson 2011

John Bell (1811–1895)

Sculptor, etcher and designer for the industrial arts. Born in Suffolk, Bell went to London at the age of 16, and enrolled in Henry Sass’s Drawing School in Soho. In 1829 he moved on to the Sculpture School of the Royal Academy. After completing his training, he exhibited at the Royal Academy and at the Society of Arts, and became a founder member of the Etching Club in 1838. In 1839 he was an unsuccessful entrant for the Nelson Memorial competition. It was, however, with his ideal works that Bell first attracted the attention of critics and the public. His figure of Dorothea, inspired by an episode in Don Quixote, shown at the Royal Academy in 1839, proved especially popular. A marble version was commissioned by Lord Lansdowne, and like many of Bell’s compositions, it was later adapted by the Minton factory as a Parian Ware statuette. Bell’s Eagle Slayer, a poetic conception of his own, was ideal sculpture of a more heroic and morally elevated kind. It was shown first at the Royal Academy in 1837, but often thereafter in a variety of materials. As a public statuary, Bell was employed first at the Sydenham Crystal Palace in 1853, and in the following year he produced two historical figures for St Stephen’s Hall, Westminster. He adopted a sombre, heroic style and symmetrical composition for the Wellington Memorial in the Guildhall (1856), and again in 1860 for the Guards Crimean War Memorial in Waterloo Place. Bell’s proposal of a kneeling figure of the Consort in medieval armour for the Albert Memorial was not adopted, but he was commissioned to produce the marble group of America for the northwest corner of the memorial. Positioned on the memorial in 1870, this group, with its five symbolic figures around a charging bison, was described as ‘a really great work’ by The Times, at the unveiling in 1872. In 1847, Bell had cooperated with Henry Cole in his attempt to introduce artistic quality into domestic utensils, the so-called Felix Summerly’s Art Manufactures, and he went on to provide many models for industrial reproduction in a variety of materials. The Coalbrookdale Ironworks and Minton’s were his most frequent collaborators. Bell was a poet and art theorist, a frequent contributor to Building News and the Journal of the Society of Arts.

Bibliography: R. Barnes, John Bell. The Sculptor’s Life and Works, Kirstead, Norfolk, 1999; T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of Kensington and Chelsea with Westminster South-West, Watford, 2023, pp. xviii, 224, 225, 323, 353–54, 404–05, 424–25, 428, 429, 430, 431, 436, 481; R. Cocke, Public Sculpture of Norfolk and Suffolk, Liverpool, 2013, pp. 42–43; E. Morris and E. Roberts, Public Sculpture of Cheshire and Merseyside, Liverpool, 2012, pp. 226–28, 241–42; G.T. Noszlopy and F. Waterhouse, Public Sculpture of Herefordshire, Shropshire and Worcestershire, Liverpool, 2010, pp. 68–69;  B. Read, Victorian Sculpture, New Haven and London, 1982; I. Roscoe et al, A Biographical Dictionary of Sculptors in Britain 1660–1851, New Haven and London, 2009; P. Ward-Jackson, Public Sculpture of the City of London, Liverpool, 2003, pp. 177–81; P. Ward-Jackson, Public Sculpture of Historic Westminster. Volume 1, Liverpool, 2011, pp. 174–75, 388–90; D. White and E. Norman, Public Sculpture of Sheffield and South Yorkshire, Liverpool, 2015, pp. 124–26, 179–80.

Philip Ward-Jackson 2011

Thomas Currie Bell (fl. 1892–1925)

Edinburgh painter of landscape and genre subjects, who returned to Scotland c.1904 after several years in London. His only recorded sculpture is the portrait of Dr Hugh Dewar on the Dewar Fountain, Abercorn Park, Portobello, Edinburgh.

Bibliography: P.J.M. McEwan, The Dictionary of Scottish Art and Architecture, Ballater, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, 2004; R. McKenzie, Public Sculpture of Edinburgh (2 vols), Liverpool, 2018, vol. 2, p. 487.

Ray McKenzie 2018

Frantisek (Franta) Belsky (1921–2000)

Sculptor. Born in Brno, Czechoslovakia, son of economist, Joseph Belsky. At 16 he won a prize in a sculpture competition in Prague. His family fled to England in 1938. Belsky studied at the Central School of Arts and Crafts (1939–40). He served in the artillery during World War II. After the war he recommenced his artistic education, studying sculpture at the Royal College of Art, completing his course there in 1950. As a sculptor he was known for his portraiture, but also produced abstract sculpture and architectural works. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society of British Sculptors (Council Member 1958–92) and was President of the Society of Portrait Sculptors (1963–68 and 1994–99). Portrait busts include Cecil Day-Lewis (National Portrait Gallery, 1952), Admiral Lord Cunningham (Trafalgar Square, 1967), Harry S. Truman (Presidential Library, Independence, Missouri, 1974), John Piper (National Portrait Gallery, 1987) and Winston Churchill (Churchill College, Cambridge). Belsky also executed many busts of members of the royal family. His public statues include Winston Churchill (Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri; British Embassy, Prague) and Lord Mountbatten of Burma (Horseguards Parade, London, 1983). Other sculptures include Paratroop Memorial (Prague, 1947), Cecil Rhodes Statue (Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, 1953), Joy Ride (Town Square, Stevenage, 1957) and Triga (Caltex House, Knightsbridge, 1958), and RAF Memorial (Prague, 1995). The massive Shell Centre Fountain (Lambeth, 1963) is also by Belsky. Governor of St Martin’s School of Art, 1967–88. He married Margaret Owen in 1964, who was to become better known as the cartoonist, ‘Belsky’. She died in 1989. In 1996 he married the Czech sculptor, Irena Sedlecka. Vaclav Havel, then President of the Czech Republic, presented Belsky with the Presidential Medal of Merit in 1999.

Bibliography: F. Belsky, Franta Belsky Sculpture (intro. C. Lom; reviews by M. Levy and G.S. Whittet), London and Prague, 1992; T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of Kensington and Chelsea with Westminster South-West, Watford, 2023, pp. 445–46; T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of South London, Liverpool, 2007, pp. 30–32, 46–47, 86, 316–18; Guardian, 7 July 2000 (obit); Times, 7 July 2000 (obit.); P. Ward-Jackson, Public Sculpture of Historic Westminster. Volume 1, Liverpool, 2011, pp. 77–79, 303, 304; D. White and E. Norman, Public Sculpture of Sheffield and South Yorkshire, Liverpool, 2015, pp. 39–40; T. Wyke, Public Sculpture of Greater Manchester, Liverpool, 2004, pp. 155–56.

Philip Ward-Jackson 2011

Paolo Valentino Bernini (1648–1728)

Sculptor. A son of Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini, he remained in his father’s workshop until the latter’s death in 1680. In 1665, when Giovanni was summoned to Paris to work for Louis XIV, Paolo accompanied him, and while there – and with some help from his father – executed a low relief in marble, The Infant Jesus with the Instruments of the Passion (Louvre). He worked with his father on one of the Angel statues on the Ponte Sant’Angelo in Rome and executed the matching memorials to the da Silva family on the side walls of his father’s Cappella da Silva in the church of Sant’ Isidoro a Capo le Case, Rome. The design of the Monument to Lady Jane Cheyne, 1670–72, Chelsea Old Church, is attributed to him. Paolo was admitted to membership of Accademia di San Luca in 1672.

Bibliography: T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of Kensington and Chelsea with Westminster South-West, Watford, 2023, pp. 73–77; W.L. Hildburgh, ‘A Signed Marble Cupid Perhaps by Paolo Valentino Bernini’, Burlington Magazine, November 1942, pp. 280, 282–84; J. Montagu, Roman Baroque Sculpture. The industry of art, New Haven and London, 1989, pp. 6–7, 38–44; Oxford Art Online – Benezit Dictionary of Artists.

Terry Cavanagh November 2022

William Beveridge (fl. 1884–1911)

Edinburgh carver and modeller who established his business, William Beveridge & Son, on Harrison Road in 1884. He contributed to the programmes of carved decoration on the Mercat Cross in 1885 and the McEwan Hall in 1889–97, as well as on Robert Rowand Anderson’s Conservative Club, Princes Street, in 1882–84.

Bibliography: J. Gifford et al., Edinburgh (The Buildings of Scotland), Harmondsworth, 1984, pp. 312–13; W.T. Johnston, Dictionary of Scottish Artists (c.2000), Scottish National Library, ref CD-ROM.585; R. McKenzie, Public Sculpture of Edinburgh (2 vols), Liverpool, 2018, vol. 2, pp. 19, 343, 361.

Ray McKenzie 2018

Leslie Cubitt Bevis (1892–1984)

Sculptor and teacher. He was born in Maidstone, Kent, and died in Croydon. In the First World War, he joined the 28th London Regiment (Artists’ Rifles) as a private; in July 1917, he was commissioned as a temporary lieutenant in the 2nd Highland Light Infantry and was subsequently wounded. In the Second World War, he was briefly an officer in the RAF, before transferring to the army where he specialised in camouflage in the Western Desert of North Africa. Between the wars, he taught at Bedford School and following the second, at several art schools, including Camberwell, Wimbledon and St Martin’s. For some years from 1957, he occupied a studio in the Buddhist Society building at 58 Eccleston Square, Pimlico, although according to his son he was never a Buddhist, simply ‘straight Church of England’. Bevis showed (mainly portrait heads and busts) at the RA from 1946 to 1966. His bust of Hugh Gaitskell, 1963, is in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery and his statue of Thomas More, 1967–69, outside Chelsea Old Church, Cheyne Walk.

Bibliography: D. Buckman, Artists in Britain since 1945 (2 vols: A–L, M–Z), Bristol, 2006; T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of Kensington and Chelsea with Westminster South-West, Watford, 2023, pp. 29–32; Mapping Sculpture.

Terry Cavanagh November 2022

George Edwin Bissell (1839–1920)

American sculptor, and founder member of the American National Sculpture Society. The son of a quarry master in New Preston, Connecticut, he served as a private in the American Civil War, after which he joined his father’s marble business in Poughkeepsie, New York, where he began modelling in clay. He studied sculpture in Europe, and lived in Paris from 1883 to 1896. He had a thriving portrait practice, and produced a number of monuments commemorating the Civil War, such as at Colchester, Connecticut (1875), and its political and military heroes, including Col. John Lyman Chatfield at Waterbury, Connecticut (1887), and Abraham Lincoln in Lincoln Park, Clermont, Iowa (1902). His Monument to Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation of the American Slaves (unveiled 21 August 1893) is in the Old Calton Burying Ground, Edinburgh.

Bibliography: R. McKenzie, Public Sculpture of Edinburgh (2 vols), Liverpool, 2018, vol. 2, pp. 446–51; Smithsonian American Art Museum website.

Ray McKenzie 2018

Black Isle Bronze (est. 1994)

Foundry based in Nairn, near Inverness in north-east Scotland, purpose-built for producing large-scale casting work using both the lost-wax and sand processes. Under the direction of Farquhar Ogilvie-Laing, the company has provided decorative schemes for a number of major architectural projects, such as the eight-storey retail and office building by Robert Adam Architects at 198–202 Piccadilly, London, which included bronze capitals, bases, urns and herms modelled by Alexander Stoddart. Stoddart also used Black Isle Bronze for his statues of James Clerk Maxwell, George Street, 2006–08, and William Henry Playfair, Chambers Street, 2016, and also for Clio, Muse of History, 2011–13, Scottish National Portrait Gallery building, all Edinburgh. Other sculptors using the foundry include Lucy Poett, for her statue of Sandy Irvine Robertson, 1993, The Shore, Leith, Edinburgh; Tom Maley, for statues of George Hardwick, 2000, and Wilf Mannion, 2001, Riverside Stadium, Middlesborough, N. Yorks; and Gerald Laing (the Director’s father), for Fountain of Sabrina, 1980–81, Bristol, New Mercat Cross, 2003, Falcon Square, Inverness, and four statues and one group representing The Spirit of Rugby, 1995 and 2010, outside Twickenham Rugby Stadium, London.

Principal source: Black Isle Bronze Ltd website.

Ray McKenzie 2018

George Frederick Bodley (1827–1907)

Architect and designer of Scottish descent born in Hull. He was the pupil of, and then assistant to, Sir George Gilbert Scott. Bodley was primarily a church architect, working in the Gothic style, firstly drawing influence from the French C13, then, from the late 1860s, English Decorated Gothic of the first half of C14; he also designed secular buildings in a Queen Anne style. For his earliest works – for example, All Saints, Selsley, Gloucestershire (designed 1858), described as ‘the finest achievement of his early years’ (Michael Hall, ODNB) – he employed the firm of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co for all the stained glass and decorations. During the 1870s, Bodley parted company with the firm in a drive to retain tighter personal control across all aspects of his buildings’ designs, thereafter frequently using, e.g., Rattee & Kett for woodwork, Barkentin & Krall for metalwork, and Burlison & Grylls for stained glass. In 1869, he went into an informal partnership with Thomas Garner. The partnership’s best-known designs include St Augustine, Pendlebury, Manchester (designed 1870) and Holy Angels, Hoar Cross, Staffordshire (designed 1871–72). The partnership was amicably dissolved in 1897, following Garner’s conversion to Roman Catholicism. Bodley’s final commission was for the Episcopal Cathedral, Washington, DC (designs prepared 1906–07, construction begun 1910, construction completed 1990). Bodley also designed wallpaper, textiles, vestments, and ecclesiastical fittings and furniture, for the production of which in 1874 he, Garner and George Gilbert Scott jnr established Watts & Co. Bodley was elected ARA in 1882 and RA in 1902, and was awarded the RIBA Gold Medal in 1899. Bodley’s pupils include C.R. Ashbee, Sir Ninian Comper and Edward Warren. Michael Hall (ODNB) described Bodley as ‘unquestionably the most influential architect at work in the Anglican church during the last third of the nineteenth century’.

Bibliography: T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of Kensington and Chelsea with Westminster South-West, Watford, 2023, pp. 339–42; T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of Leicestershire and Rutland, Liverpool, 2000, pp. 242–43; M. Hall, ‘Bodley, George Frederick (1827–1907)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford, 2004; M. Hall, George Frederick Bodley and the later Gothic Revival in Britain and America, New Haven and London, 2014; G.T. Noszlopy and F. Waterhouse, Public Sculpture of Staffordshire and the Black Country, Liverpool, 2005, pp. 79.

Terry Cavanagh November 2022

Sir Joseph Edgar Boehm (1834–1890)

Sculptor, born in Vienna, the son of Josef Daniel Böhm, a Hungarian medallist and director of the Imperial Mint. The young Boehm travelled frequently with his father, visiting England where he was much impressed with the Parthenon sculptures and Italy where he admired Renaissance portrait statues. He spent three years in Paris, marrying an Englishwoman there in 1860 and converting to Protestantism. In 1862, he settled in London and in 1865 became naturalised. Among those attracted to his portrait busts and statuettes, and in particular his equine subjects, was Queen Victoria, who in 1869 appointed him sculptor tutor to Princess Louise and awarded him three commissions, including a colossal marble statue of herself enthroned for Windsor Castle. Boehm was elected ARA in 1878 and RA in 1882, was elected a member of the Academy of Florence in 1875 and of Rome in 1880, and was appointed baronet in 1889. Boehm’s realistic style, with its spirited modelling and anatomical accuracy, though popular with the public was dismissed by those critics who expected ‘a finer, more idealised, more classicising touch’. Just as there is general agreement that Boehm’s statue of Thomas Carlyle, 1882, Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, is among his finest works, so is there that his Duke of Wellington, 1889, Hyde Park Corner, is among his least successful, The Times, echoing the thoughts of many critics, admiring the quality of its portraiture but adjudging the work as a whole ‘a failure from the point of view of design, the four soldiers at the base being mere excrescences, and forming no part of the pedestal’. Other important commissions include John Bunyan, 1872–74, Bedford; Sir John Burgoyne, 1875–77, Waterloo Place; William Tyndale, 1881–84, Victoria Embankment Gardens; Sir Francis Drake, 1882–84, Plymouth; Charles Darwin, 1885, Natural History Museum, and Queen Victoria, 1887, Castle Hill, Windsor. Boehm lived and worked in Kensington for most of his residence in England: in 1864 he was at 28 Brompton Crescent; from 1865 to 1869, at 13 Sumner Place (this may have been a studio address); and by 1870, at 34 Onslow Square (Marochetti’s former home). From 1873 until his death, he worked from a studio at The Avenue (Sydney Close), 76 Fulham Road, and from 1884, lived in a house designed for him at 25 Wetherby Gardens. Boehm died suddenly in his studio one evening, possibly from a heart attack, and was either with Princess Louise at the time, or discovered by her after, circumstances which led the contemporary press to conclude the couple had been having an affair. Working at the time in an adjacent studio was Alfred Gilbert, a former assistant of Boehm’s, who would go on to complete many of Boehm’s unfinished works.

Bibliography: The Athenaeum, 20 December 1890, p. 861; T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of Kensington and Chelsea with Westminster South-West, Watford, 2023, pp. xxv, xxvi, xxxiv, xxxv, xxxvi, xxxvii, 42, 49–50, 58, 82, 165, 175–78, 253–57, 261, 318–21, 367; R. Cocke, Public Sculpture of Norfolk and Suffolk, Liverpool, 2013, pp. 48–49, 110, 272; R. McKenzie, Public Sculpture of Edinburgh (2 vols), Liverpool, 2018, vol. 1, pp. 116–17, 155, 365–66; R. McKenzie, Public Sculpture of Glasgow, Liverpool, 2002, pp. 96–100; D. Merritt and F. Greenacre, with K. Eustace, Public Sculpture of Bristol, Liverpool, 2011, pp. 66–69; E. Morris and E. Roberts, Public Sculpture of Cheshire and Merseyside, Liverpool, 2012, p. 144; G.T. Noszlopy, Public Sculpture of Warwickshire, Coventry & Solihull, Liverpool, 2003, pp. 215–16; Pall Mall Gazette, 13 December 1890, p. 4; Royal Academy Summer Exhibition: a chronicle, 1769-2018; Saturday Review, 20 December 1890, p. 704; The Spectator, 20 December 1890, pp. 900–01; S. Stocker, ‘Boehm, Sir (Joseph) Edgar, baronet (1834–1890)’, ODNB, Oxford, 2004; The Times, 13 December 1890, p. 9; P. Ward-Jackson, Public Sculpture of the City of London, Liverpool, 2003, pp. 115–22; P. Ward-Jackson, Public Sculpture of Historic Westminster. Volume 1, Liverpool, 2011, pp. 88–92, 323–26, 398–401, 407–08.

Terry Cavanagh November 2022

Phyllis Mary Bone (1894–1972)

Born in Hornsby, Lancashire, she attended St George’s School for Girls, Edinburgh, later studying art in Edinburgh, Rome and Paris, where she was taught by the leading animalier, Edouard Nevallier. After graduating from Edinburgh College of Art in 1918, she contributed animal sculptures to various major architectural schemes, most notably the Scottish National War Memorial, Edinburgh, later embarking on a successful independent career as a specialist in animal statuettes, mostly in bronze. She was the first female member of the Royal Scottish Academy, and died in Kirkcudbright, where she spent the last twenty-three years of her life.

Bibliography: P.J.M. McEwan, The Dictionary of Scottish Art and Architecture, Ballater, Aberdeenshire, 2004; R. McKenzie, Public Sculpture of Edinburgh (2 vols), Liverpool, 2018, vol. 1, pp. 106–08, 257, 413–14, vol. 2, pp. 380–81, 474.

Ray McKenzie 2018

Gilbert Dutson Boulton (1865–1936)

Sculptor born in Worcestershire. His father, Richard Lockwood Boulton (c.1832–1905) established a successful sculpture and architectural carving business in Cheltenham in 1870/71. Gilbert and his brothers, Lockwood (1857–1927), Thomas (1860–1932) and Frank (c.1877–?) worked for their father and took over the running of the firm on his retirement in 1893; the firm continued until at least 1971. Gilbert Boulton’s commissions include figure carvings at St Cuthbert’s, Philbeach Gardens, Kensington, 1896–1908; the carving of Temple Moore’s rood screen, 1912, in St Mary the Virgin, Lowgate, Hull; and a stone figure of St George for Bodley & Hare’s war memorial at Walford, Ross on Wye, Herefordshire (dedicated 1925; listed Grade II 1987).

Bibliography: T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of Kensington and Chelsea with Westminster South-West, Watford, 2023, pp. 249–50; Mapping Sculpture.

Terry Cavanagh November 2022

Frank Bowcher (or Boucher) (1864–1938)

Medallist, designer of seals, and sculptor, born in London. His father, Henry, was an etcher, draughtsman and cartoonist and his brother, Alfred William (1863–1890), a sculptor. Boucher entered the National Art Training School, South Kensington, c.1881, and worked in the studio of Edward Onslow Ford. He was awarded silver medals at the Paris Universal Exhibition, 1900, and at the Brussels Universal Exhibition, 1910. He was, in 1905, a founder member of the RBS. He executed marble portrait busts for a number of prestigious clients including the Duke and Duchess of Connaught, the Earl and Countess of Derby and the Maharaja Gaekwar of Baroda, but it was as a medallist and designer of seals that he chiefly became known. He designed the silver seals for King Edward VII and King George V; decorations (Order of Merit) for Baroda State, India; the Osler Memorial Medal for the University of Oxford; and medals for the RCA, Royal College of Science and Eton College. He also designed and executed silver statuettes for the opening of the Sennar Dam, Sudan, and restored antique bronzes for the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. He was a regular exhibitor at the RA.

Bibliography: T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of Kensington and Chelsea with Westminster South-West, Watford, 2023, p. 101; F. Lloyd et al, Public Sculpture of Outer South and West London, Liverpool, 2011, pp. 67–68; The Times, 8 December 1938, p. 18 (obit.).

Terry Cavanagh November 2022

Allister Bowtell (1940–2006)

Sculptor, film designer and model maker, born in Sheen, Surrey, and educated at King’s College school, Wimbledon. After two years as a trainee cameraman for Rediffusion television, in 1961 he entered Chelsea Art School as a mature student, leaving in protest when the school lost its Dip AD sculpture accreditation. Making use of his television contacts, he obtained employment as a model maker, in 1966 making the models for Tweedledum and Tweedledee in Jonathan Miller’s adaptation of Alice in Wonderland and for the first appearance of the cybermen in Doctor Who (both BBC). He was a part-time lecturer at Wimbledon School of Art, 1966–70, and the London College of Printing, 1974–78. When computer simulation reduced the demand for television props he turned to sculpture, working in a multiplicity of materials. He secured many private and public commissions, including Two Pupils, 2003, King’s Road, Chelsea. He was a member of the London Sketch Club and Chelsea Arts Club (chairman, 1997–2000). A keen oarsman, he rowed for the Arts Club and was vice-president of Vesta Rowing Club, near his home at Putney. In 2001, he was elected to the RBS. He died of prostate cancer at the age of 66.

Bibliography: T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of Kensington and Chelsea with Westminster South-West, Watford, 2023, pp. 50–51; The Guardian online, 13 October 2006 (obit.).

Terry Cavanagh November 2022

Sidney Nicholson Boyes (b. c.1878; active 1901–31)

Sculptor born in Southampton, Hampshire. In 1902, he was awarded a free studentship by the Board of Education to study at Southampton School of Art for two years. He afterwards attended the RCA, his contribution to an exercise in composition, a decorative panel entitled Music, appearing in the Art & Crafts Magazine, 1904. In the following year, Boyes was one of four students selected by Edouard Lantéri to work on a figure for Aston Webb’s new façade for the V&A Museum, Boyes being allotted Lord Leighton. About this time, he moved to Aberdeen to take up a teaching post at Gray’s School of Art. While in Aberdeen, he was commissioned to design and produce the leopard finials and a bronze relief of personifications of trades, finance, fishing, shipbuilding, engineering and agriculture for the city’s Union Bridge (1905–08). He showed at the Aberdeen Artists’ Society Exhibition of Works of Modern Artists in 1906 and 1908 and the RSA in 1907. By 1910, he was back in London, initially working from 7 Wentworth Studios, Manresa Road, Chelsea. From this year until 1931, he showed 11 works – busts and statuettes – at the RA. He was a member of the RBS from 1908 until his resignation in 1928 and, from 1916 to 1926, taught modelling at the Central School of Arts and Crafts.

Bibliography: ‘Exhibition of Students’ Work at the Royal College of Art. Part 2. Awards’, Arts & Crafts Magazine, 1904; T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of Kensington and Chelsea with Westminster South-West, Watford, 2023, p. 168; Mapping Sculpture; J. Physick, The Victoria and Albert Museum: The History of its Building, London, 1982; Royal Academy Exhibitors 1905–1970. A dictionary of artists and their work in the Summer Exhibitions of the Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1973.

Terry Cavanagh November 2022

Eoghan Bridge (b. 1963)

Born in Edinburgh, he studied at Harrogate College of Art and Leeds Polytechnic, graduating in 1985. His work is almost entirely focused on equestrian subject matter, with a particular concern for the relationship between horse and rider, the physical, emotional and philosophical aspects of which are explored through drawings and prints before being realised sculpturally. The bulk of his commissioned work has been for private collectors, but also includes six ceramic and two large bronze variants on the Horse and Rider theme for the P&O cruise liner Ventura (2007).

Bibliography: Kilmorack Gallery website – ‘Artists: Eoghan Bridge’; R. McKenzie, Public Sculpture of Edinburgh (2 vols), Liverpool, 2018, vol. 2, pp. 409–11.

Ray McKenzie October 2023

John Broad (c.1858–1919)

Modeller, based in Wandsworth, principally producing figures, monuments and terracotta ware. He joined Doulton & Co in 1873, firstly as an assistant to George Tinworth, remaining there throughout his working life. He also studied at Lambeth School of Art and afterwards the RA Schools, in 1882 winning a silver medal for a model of a figure from the life. In 1888, he modelled an India group and a Queen Victoria statue for Doulton’s Victoria Fountain in Glasgow. When in 1894 the latter was destroyed by lightning, Henry Doulton, at his own expense, had Broad make a new model for Glasgow Corporation. Whereas the first had been a unique cast, this second was a multiple edition, with one cast going up outside Doulton’s Lambeth offices (removed 1910 to make way for road alterations and subsequently broken up) and another at Gravesend. Also for Doulton were his statues of General Gordon, 1893, Gravesend, and Queen Victoria, 1897–98, for Gravesend and 1899 for Albert Embankment, London (destroyed); decorative reliefs, including spandrels of ‘Night’ and ‘Day’, over the entrance of R.W. Edis’s Hotel Great Central (now The Landmark), Marylebone Road, 1897–99; and the tympanum relief for Harrods, c.1905, Brompton Road. Examples of his works were shown at Arts and Crafts exhibitions, London, 1890, 1891 and 1910, the Chicago World Fair, 1893, and the RA, 1890–1900.

Bibliography: V. Bergesen, Encyclopaedia of British Art Pottery 1870–1920 (ed. G.A. Godden), London, 1991; T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of Kensington and Chelsea with Westminster South-West, Watford, 2023, p. 122; T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of South London, Liverpool, 2007, pp. 357–58; D. Eyles, The Lambeth Doulton Wares (rev. L. Irvine), Shepton Beauchamp, Somerset, 2002; A. Graves, The Royal Academy of Arts: a Complete Dictionary of Contributors and their Works from its Foundation in 1769 to 1904, London, 1905–06 (8 vols); R. McKenzie, Public Sculpture of Glasgow, Liverpool, 2002, pp. 167–71; Mapping Sculpture; G.T. Noszlopy and F. Waterhouse, Public Sculpture of Herefordshire, Shropshire and Worcestershire, Liverpool, 2010, pp. 212–13; G. Tinworth (handwritten draft for an autobiography), c.1911, Southwark Local Studies Library (920 TIN); P. Ward-Jackson, Public Sculpture of the City of London, Liverpool, 2003, p. 225; Wyke, T., Public Sculpture of Greater Manchester, Liverpool, 2004, pp. 145–46.

Terry Cavanagh November 2022

Abraham Broadbent (1868–1919)

Architectural sculptor born in Shipley, Yorkshire, resident in London from c.1895. Both his father, William P. Broadbent, and brother, Samuel, were stonemasons. Broadbent studied at the South London Technical School of Art and in 1895 was awarded the Sculpture Studentship (£50 per annum for two years). By 1912, W.S. Frith could say that Broadbent had ‘arrived at the acknowledged position of being one of our first architectural sculptors’. Writing in 1921, Kineton Parkes listed him among the best sculptors of his generation. For Aston Webb, he carved relief figures of Huntington Shaw and Thomas Tompion, 1905, for the V&A’s Exhibition Road frontage. He also carved the decorative programme for the Eton School Hall (1904–08) and a sculpture called The White Man’s Burden (1913) for the Union Government Building in Pretoria, South Africa. He was, until his death, a member of the AWG (from 1901) and RBS (from 1906). He exhibited at the RA from 1901 to 1919.

Bibliography: T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of Kensington and Chelsea with Westminster South-West, Watford, 2023, p. 170; Mapping Sculpture; G.T. Noszlopy and F. Waterhouse, Public Sculpture of Staffordshire and the Black Country, Liverpool, 2005, pp. 71–72, 74–76; K. Parkes, Sculpture of To-Day, vol. 1, 1921; P. Ward-Jackson, Public Sculpture of the City of London, Liverpool, 2003, pp. 109, 110.

Terry Cavanagh November 2022

Eric Raymond Broadbent (1896–1965)

Architectural sculptor, the son of Abraham Broadbent (c.1868–1919), also an architectural sculptor, and grandson of William Broadbent, stonemason. Eric Broadbent presumably trained in his father’s workshop and was trading as Messrs Broadbent & Sons when he executed the decorative carving – Portland stone keystones and garlands – on Edwin Lutyens’s Britannic House, Finsbury Circus, London (1921–25). He also worked for Lutyens, carving the Portland stone unit badges, on the latter’s Royal Naval Division War Memorial, Horse Guards Parade (completed 1925). His most prestigious commission, however, was the Speed Wings Over the World group, again in Portland stone, which stands over the entrance to Albert Lakeman’s Imperial Airways Terminal (occupied, at the time of writing, by the National Audit Office), Buckingham Palace Road (1937–39). Broadbent lived in London throughout his working life (430 Fulham Road, 1921–38), although he was living in or near Marlborough, Wiltshire, at the time of his death.

Bibliography: T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of Kensington and Chelsea with Westminster South-West, Watford, 2023, pp. 452–53; Mapping Sculpture; P. Ward-Jackson, Public Sculpture of the City of London, Liverpool, 2003, pp. 109, 110.

Terry Cavanagh November 2023

Stephen Broadbent (b. 1962)

Sculptor born in Wroughton, Wiltshire. Broadbent was educated at Bluecoat School, Liverpool, and trained as an apprentice with Arthur Dooley, 1979–83. His work developed from limited edition bronze sculptures into larger public commissions, including Reconciliation (three casts unveiled simultaneously, 19 September 1990, in Liverpool, Glasgow and Belfast); Celebration of Chester, Chester (1992); The Bullring, Liverpool (1999); and Encounter, Warrington (2003). His Chester-based company, Broadbent Studio, has also produced numerous water features, such as River of Life, Warrington (1996) and Seasons, Manchester (2002).

Bibliography: broadbent studio (the sculptor’s website); T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of Liverpool, Liverpool, 1997, pp. 29–30; D.A. Cross, Public Sculpture of Lancashire and Cumbria, Liverpool, 2017, pp. 18, 48–49, 81–82; R. McKenzie, Public Sculpture of Edinburgh (2 vols), Liverpool, 2018, vol. 1, pp. 52–53; R. McKenzie, Public Sculpture of Glasgow, Liverpool, 2002, pp. 79–80;  E. Morris and E. Roberts, Public Sculpture of Cheshire and Merseyside, Liverpool, 2012, p. xxxi, 5, 7, 68, 111, 112, 228–29; D. White and E. Norman, Public Sculpture of Sheffield and South Yorkshire, Liverpool, 2015, pp. 123–24;  T. Wyke, Public Sculpture of Greater Manchester, Liverpool, 2004, pp. 368, 369–71.

Ray McKenzie 2018

Sir Thomas Brock (1847–1922)

Sculptor. Born in Worcester where he attended the Government School of Design. In 1866 he moved to London and became a pupil of John Henry Foley. In 1867 he entered the Royal Academy Schools gaining, in 1869, the RA gold medal in sculpture for his group, Hercules Strangling Antaeus, which was exhibited at the RA in 1870. In this same year, 1870, he produced his first portrait statue, Richard Baxter, at Kidderminster. When Foley died in 1874, Brock undertook to complete many of his unfinished commissions, thereby succeeding to much of his practice. Brock’s numerous public commissions include portrait statues of Sir Bartle Frere (1888, Victoria Embankment Gardens, London), and Sir J.E. Millais (1904, John Islip Street, London – originally in front of the Tate Gallery); the Tomb of Lord Leighton (1900, St Paul’s Cathedral); and an Equestrian Statue of the Black Prince (1902, City Square, Leeds), but the most prestigious was the Memorial to Queen Victoria (with Aston Webb) in front of Buckingham Palace, earning him his knighthood at its unveiling in 1911. It was probably on the strength of this that Brock was chosen to sculpt a memorial to New Zealand’s then longest serving Prime Minister, Richard John Seddon, which, since 2015 has stood outside the Parliament Buildings in Wellington. Brock exhibited at the RA, 1868–1922, and was elected ARA in 1883 and RA in 1891. He was first president of the Royal Society of British Sculptors at its founding in 1905 and membre d’honneur of the Société des Artistes Français. He was made honorary ARIBA in 1908, honorary DCL at Oxford University in 1909, and honorary RSA in 1916. He died 22 August 1922.

Bibliography: S. Beattie, The New Sculpture, New Haven and London, 1983; F. Brock, Thomas Brock. Forgotten Sculptor of the Victoria Memorial (ed. J. Sankey), Bloomington, 2012; T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of Kensington and Chelsea with Westminster South-West, Watford, 2023, pp. xxxvii, 86, 121, 144–46, 149–51, 376, 437, 481; T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of Leicestershire and Rutland, Liverpool, 2000, pp. 301–04; T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of Liverpool, Liverpool, 1997, pp. 173–75, 186–90; T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of South London, Liverpool, 2007, pp. 7–9; D.A. Cross, Public Sculpture of Lancashire and Cumbria, Liverpool, 2017, pp. 127–28, 138–39; E. Morris and E. Roberts, Public Sculpture of Cheshire and Merseyside, Liverpool, 2012, pp. 83–84; G.T. Noszlopy, Public Sculpture of Birmingham, Liverpool, 1998, pp. 144–45; G.T. Noszlopy, Public Sculpture of Warwickshire, Coventry & Solihull, Liverpool, 2003, pp. 28–30; G.T. Noszlopy and F. Waterhouse, Public Sculpture of Herefordshire, Shropshire and Worcestershire, Liverpool, 2010, pp. 208–10, 213–16, 232–33, 257–58; G.T. Noszlopy and F. Waterhouse, Public Sculpture of Staffordshire and the Black Country, Liverpool, 2005, pp. 146–47;  J. Sankey, ‘Thomas Brock and the Critics’, unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Leeds, 2002 (copy held at the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds); J. Seddon et al, Public Sculpture of Sussex, Liverpool, 2014, pp. 74–75;  M. Stocker, ‘“A Great Man and a Great Imperialist”: Sir Thomas Brock’s Statue of Richard John Seddon’, Sculpture Journal, vol. I, 1997, pp. 45–50; P. Ward-Jackson, Public Sculpture of Historic Westminster. Volume 1, Liverpool, 2011, pp. 20–21, 22–24, 28–30, 106–08, 123–33, 139–41, 231–33, 321–23, 330–32; J. Winfrey, ‘Leeds City Square: T. Walter Harding and the realisation of a sculptural vision’, in Sculpting Art History. Essays in Memory of Benedict Read (eds. K. Eustace et al), London, 2013, pp. 218–33; Who Was Who 1916–1928.

Philip Ward-Jackson 2023

William Brodie (1815–1881)

Sculptor. The son of a Banff shipmaster, and brother of the sculptor Alexander Brodie, he worked first as a plumber in Aberdeen, where he also studied at the Mechanics’ Institute. In 1847 he moved to Edinburgh to enrol at the Trustees’ School of Design, then visited Rome in 1853 to study under Laurence Macdonald. Returning to Edinburgh, he established a large practice specialising in portrait busts and statues, many of which were exhibited at the Royal Academy and the Royal Scottish Academy. His daughter, Mary Brodie (fl. 1858–64) was also a sculptor, and was married to the architect and sculptor James Gowans. He was elected ARSA in 1852, full RSA in 1859, and served as the Academy’s secretary from 1876 to 1881. His most important public commissions include statues of Lord Cockburn, 1863, Parliament Hall, Edinburgh; Sir David Brewster, 1870, University of Edinburgh; Thomas Graham, 1871, George Square, Glasgow; and Sir James Young Simpson, 1877, Princes Street Gardens, Edinburgh. His best loved public sculpture is undoubtedly Greyfriars’ Bobby, 1872, George IV Bridge, Edinburgh.

Bibliography: R. McKenzie, Public Sculpture of Edinburgh (2 vols), Liverpool, 2018, vol. 1, pp. 60–61, 163–65, 272–73, 358–60, 394, 409–13, vol. 2, pp. 33, 35–36, 224–25, 295, 298, 303, 305, 314–16, 365, 452–53, 508, 509; R. McKenzie, Public Sculpture of Glasgow, Liverpool, 2002, pp. 139–40, 195, 444, 458, 459; I. Roscoe et al, A Biographical Dictionary of Sculptors in Britain 1660–1851, New Haven and London, 2009; Scotsman, 31 October 1881, p.4 (obit.).

Ray McKenzie 2018

Bronze Age Sculpture Casting Foundry Ltd

Foundry set up in Limehouse Basin in London’s East End in 1989 by New Zealand-born sculptor Mark Kennedy. Originally intending to cast only his own sculptures, he began taking on work from other sculptors, gradually building up a large client list, so that by 2002 he was employing about 30 people. The foundry specialises in lost wax casting of bronze and other non-ferrous metals. Public sculptures include Lawrence Holofcener’s Allies, 1995, Old Bond Street, London; Nicola Hicks’s Bettle, 2000, Anchor Square, Bristol; Les Johnson’s London Dockers, 2009, Royal Victoria Dock, East London; Tim Shaw’s The Drummer, 2011, Truro, Cornwall; Douglas Jenning’s Squadron Leader Mahinder Singh Pujji DFC, 2014, Gravesend, Kent; Allan Sly’s Sir Alec Bedser, 2015, Woking, Surrey; and Hazel Reeves’s Sir Nigel Gresley, 2016, King’s Cross Station, London, and ‘Rise Up Women’ (Emmeline Pankhurst), 2018, Manchester. Other clients include Jane Ackroyd, Maurice Blik, Paul Day, Sean Hedges-Quinn, Sean Henry, Michael Sandle and André Wallace.

Sources: Bronze Age London website; NPG British bronze sculpture founders.

Terry Cavanagh November 2022

Ford Madox Brown (1821–1893)

Painter and designer born at Calais, the son of a ship’s purser. Brown trained under Gustaf, Baron Wappers at Antwerp academy. In 1841, he married Elisabeth Bromley, a first cousin. The couple returned to England in 1844 and in 1845 travelled to Rome in an unsuccessful search for a cure for Elisabeth’s consumption; she died on the return journey in Paris in 1846. Despite Brown’s profound grief, the trip nevertheless exercised a lasting stylistic influence on his painting, having allowed him to see Italian Renaissance painting first-hand and to meet key members of the German Nazarene group living in Rome. Following his return to England, Brown was approached by the young Dante Gabriel Rossetti who had seen and admired his latest painting, Wycliffe (1847–48; Cartwright Hall, Bradford). Rossetti became Brown’s pupil and the two became lifelong friends; Rossetti modelled for the figure of Geoffrey Chaucer in Brown’s painting, Chaucer at the Court of Edward III (1846–51; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney). Following Rossetti’s death, Brown designed and modelled the headstone, 1883–84, for his friend’s grave in the churchyard of All Saints, Birchington-on-Sea, Kent, and the bust for his memorial drinking fountain on Chelsea Embankment. Although Brown never became a member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, he was sympathetic to their aims and closely associated with them. The theme of his first major painting, The Last of England (1852–55; Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery) was inspired by Pre-Raphaelite brother Thomas Woolner’s attempted emigration to Australia in 1852 and in 1874 his daughter, Emma Lucy, married Dante Gabriel’s brother, William Michael Rossetti. Brown’s association with Rossetti also led to his becoming a founder member of the firm of Rossetti’s friend William Morris, for whom he designed stained glass and furniture (see, for example, his Egyptian-style chair, 1860–61, V&A, no. W.13–1985).

Bibliography: Art Gallery NSW; B. Barringer, ‘Brown, Ford Madox (1821–1893)’, ODNB, Oxford, 2004; T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of Kensington and Chelsea with Westminster South-West, Watford, 2023, pp. 10–14; V&A Search the Collections.

Terry Cavanagh November 2022

Domenico Giovanni Brucciani (1815–1880)

Sculptor and plaster figure maker born in Barga, near Lucca. In 1829 he travelled to London to work with his uncle Luigi ‘Lewis’ Brucciani at 5 Russell Street, Covent Garden, taking over the business in around 1840 following his uncle’s return to Italy. The business became the primary supplier of plaster casts to the emerging national network of Government Schools of Design and from the 1850s onwards, the Department of Science and Art. Brucciani exhibited a plaster cast of the Apollo Belvedere at the Great Exhibition of Works of Art of All Nations in 1851 and was commissioned to cast the equestrian statue of Charles I by Hubert Le Sueur for the Crystal Palace in Sydenham in 1853. In 1857 Brucciani entered into an agreement with the British Museum to use and preserve their existing moulds and to produce new moulds from their collections of antiquities and natural history. He was a prize-winning exhibitor at the International Exhibition in 1862 and his showrooms were visited by Napoleon III the following year. Brucciani expanded his premises in 1864, naming the new 100-foot showroom at 40 Russell Street the ‘Galleria delle belle Arti’. In 1866 he produced the largest cast of his career, taken from the Puerta de la Gloria of Santiago de Compostela cathedral, commissioned by Henry Cole for the South Kensington Museum at a cost of £2,300. After Brucciani’s death in 1880 the business continued in his name, eventually passing into the hands of his grandson Paul Joseph Ryan in the early twentieth century, before being absorbed into the Victoria and Albert Museum as the Department for the Sale of Casts between 1921 and 1951.

Bibliography: T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of Kensington and Chelsea with Westminster South-West, Watford, 2023, pp. 121, 492; F. Lloyd et al, Public Sculpture of Outer South and West London, Liverpool, 2011, pp. 202–03, 283–84, 292–93, 294; R. Wade, Domenico Brucciani and the Formatori of Nineteenth-Century Britain, New York, 2019.

Rebecca Wade, March 2023

Albert Bruce Joy (or Bruce-Joy) (1842–1924)

Sculptor, born in Dublin. He was educated at Becker’s grammar school, Offenbach, Germany; King’s College, London; and also in Paris. He went on to study art at the National Art Training School, South Kensington, and RA schools, completing his artistic education with three years in Rome. He spent four years working under J.H. Foley and, following the latter’s death in 1874, executed his master’s commission of a marble statue of Robert Graves, 1877, for the Royal College of Physicians, Dublin. Bruce Joy was elected ARHA (Associate of the Royal Hibernian Academy) in 1890 and RHA in 1893. He exhibited at the RA, London, from 1866. His ability to record his sitter’s likeness with remarkable accuracy made him a sought-after portraitist. His public statues include John Laird (1877) for Birkenhead; W.E. Gladstone (1882) for Bow Churchyard, London; John Bright (1891) and Oliver Heywood (1894) both for Albert Square, Manchester; and Alexander Balfour (1905), for St John’s Gardens, Liverpool.

Bibliography: T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of Kensington and Chelsea with Westminster South-West, Watford, 2023, pp. 82–83; T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of Liverpool, Liverpool, 1997, pp. 170–71, 231–32, 286–87; R. Cocke, Public Sculpture of Norfolk and Suffolk, Liverpool, 2013, pp. 72–73; D.A. Cross, Public Sculpture of Lancashire and Cumbria, Liverpool, 2017, pp. 25–26; E. Gleichen, London’s Open-Air Statuary, London, 1928; Mapping Sculpture; E. Morris and E. Roberts, Public Sculpture of Cheshire and Merseyside, Liverpool, 2012, pp. 24–26; P. Murphy, Nineteenth-Century Irish Sculpture. Native Genius Reaffirmed, New Haven & London, 2010; G.T. Noszlopy, Public Sculpture of Birmingham, Liverpool, 1998, pp. 36–37; M.H. Spielmann, British Sculpture and Sculptors of To-day, London, 1901; Who Was Who; T. Wyke, Public Sculpture of Greater Manchester, Liverpool, 2004, pp. 18–21, 102–03, 145.

Terry Cavanagh November 2022

David Buchanan (fl. 1877–1901)

Glasgow sculptor, thought to have worked for the monumental masons Scott & Rae. His only recorded works are his statue of Rose Bradwardine on the Scott Monument, a bronze portrait roundel on the grave of James Allan in Cadder Cemetery near Kirkintilloch, the monument to James Clark MacKirdy in the Necropolis, Glasgow, and a marble bust of the gutta percha merchant James Dick in Rutherglen Museum.

Bibliography: W.T. Johnston, Dictionary of Scottish Artists (c.2000), Scottish National Library, ref CD-ROM.585; R. McKenzie, Public Sculpture of Edinburgh (2 vols), Liverpool, 2018, vol. 2, pp. 509, 511.

Ray McKenzie 2018

Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones (1833–1898)

Best known as a painter, illustrator and decorative artist, he also designed a handful of sculptural works. The sole surviving child of Edward Richard Jones and Elizabeth Coley, he was christened Edward Coley Burne Jones, but by c.1860 had adopted the surname Burne-Jones. His father ran a small carving and gilding business in Birmingham in which city, from 1848, Burne-Jones, destined for a career in engineering, attended drawing classes three evenings a week at the Government School of Design. However, when in 1852 he went up to Oxford it was to take holy orders. He quickly struck up a friendship with a fellow student, William Morris, and the two, discovering a mutual passion for art and architecture through the writings of John Ruskin and the paintings of the Pre-Raphaelites, abandoned any ideas of entering the church. Burne-Jones, having decided to become a painter, sought out Dante Gabriel Rossetti and began taking lessons from him. Rossetti’s work was to become a major influence, albeit one supplanted by the art of the quattrocento, in particular the paintings of Botticelli and Mantegna, following Burne-Jones’s trips to Italy in 1859 and 1862. In 1860 he married Georgiana Macdonald and in 1861 was a founder member of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co, supplying the firm with designs for stained glass and tapestries. His principal themes were drawn from Greek and Roman mythology, Chaucer, and Thomas Mallory’s Le morte d’Arthur. His earliest sculptural work is probably the gesso relief panel, Perseus and the Graiae (exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery, 1878; now private collection), intended as one of ten panels (four in painted gesso relief, six in oil on canvas) which Arthur Balfour had commissioned to decorate the walls of the music room of his London residence, 4 Carlton Gardens. Burne-Jones executed three gouache designs showing the whole cycle in its setting (1875–76; Tate nos: N03456, N03457, N03458), the subdued tones of the relief panels contrasting strikingly with the rich chromaticism of the paintings. He executed all ten pictures as full-size gouache cartoons (Southampton Art Gallery) during the course of which he abandoned one of the relief subjects (The Court of Phineas) and decided the cycle would be paintings only, a change of mind evidenced in the increasingly painterly appearance of the remaining three relief subjects: Perseus and the Graiae, The Death of Medusa and Atlas Turned to Stone. (He ultimately completed only four subjects in oil, all now in the Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart.) Burne-Jones’s next opportunity to work in three dimensions followed the death in childbirth of one of his young female friends (and occasional model), Laura Lyttelton (1862–1885); for her he completed a memorial relief in gesso, for the Church of St Andrew, Mells, Scotland, retaining for his own house a cast, mounted on wood, gilded and painted (now in the V&A, acc. no. P.85-1938). The subject is a peacock (for the Resurrection) perched in an olive tree which sprouts from an empty sarcophagus mounted on short piers with cushion capitals. A variation on this sarcophagus was to feature in Burne-Jones’s funerary monument to his great patron, Frederick Leyland (d. 1898), in Brompton Cemetery, Kensington, comprising a free-standing, reliquary-like chest raised on piers.

Bibliography: R. Bowdler, ‘Memorials at Mells: An Emerging Story of Remembrance’, Art & the Country House; T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of Kensington and Chelsea with Westminster South-West, Watford, 2023, pp. 113–14; F. MacCarthy, The Last Pre-Raphaelite: Edward Burne-Jones and the Victorian Imagination, London, 2011; C. Newall, ‘Jones, Sir Edward Coley Burne-, first baronet (1833–1898)’, ODNB, Oxford, 2004; A. Vallance, ‘The Decorative Art of Sir Edward Burne-Jones, Bart.’, Art Journal Easter Art Annual, 1900, p. 25; S. Wildman and J. Christian, Edward Burne-Jones: Victorian Artist-Dreamer, New York, 1998.

Terry Cavanagh January 2023

Thomas Stuart Burnett (1853–1888)

Sculptor. Born in Edinburgh (?), the son of a lithographer, he studied with William Brodie, before attending classes at the Royal Scottish Academy (RSA) Life School, where his figure of Antinous won a gold medal in the national competitions. A prolific portraitist, he was particularly admired for his busts of children (see, e.g., Head of an Infant, 1885, Glasgow Museums Resource Centre), but he also produced a number of major commemorative works, including a sandstone statue of Queen Victoria on Percy’s Buildings, Dumfries (n.d), and the bronze Monument to General Gordon in Aberdeen, erected after his death. His best known work is the bronze statue of Alexander Selkirk, the prototype of Robinson Crusoe, in Lower Largo, Fife (1885). He was elected ARSA in 1883, and exhibited regularly at the RSA from 1870 until his early death at the age of thirty-five.

Bibliography: W.T. Johnston, Dictionary of Scottish Artists (c.2000), Scottish National Library, ref CD-ROM.585; P.J.M. McEwan, The Dictionary of Scottish Art and Architecture, Ballater, Aberdeenshire, 2004; R. McKenzie, Public Sculpture of Edinburgh (2 vols), Liverpool, 2018, vol. 1, pp. 370–71, vol. 2, pp. 264, 509, 520; Scotsman, 5 March 1888, p. 6 (obit.).

Ray McKenzie 2018

Andrew Burton (b. 1961)

Sculptor born in Kent. He attended Newcastle University, graduating with a first-class degree in fine art in 1983 and a master’s degree in 1986, after which he visited India on a British Academy Travelling Scholarship. In 1983, he won a prize for sculpture at the Tyne Tees Northern Open and in 1990 the McGrigor Donald Sculpture Prize. His public commissions include three bronzes for Gateshead Garden Festival (Lion; Elephant under a Moroccan Edifice; and Tipping off the World), 1990 (now in Newcastle Business Park); An Urban Elephant, 1991, for Stevenage Museum (Herts) Sculpture Trail; Durham Cow, 1997, for The Racecourse riverside path, Durham; Annunciation, 2000, for Holland Park; Cycle (aka Medieval Life), 2001, for Castle Gate Roundabout, Dudley; and Cook’s Earth, 2003, for James Cook University Hospital, Middlesbrough. He has exhibited internationally since 1990 and has undertaken both solo and collaborative projects in the UK, Netherlands, India, China and Korea; a strong theme in his work is the use of bricks and other retrieved material, emphasising the sculptural possibilities of everyday objects. Burton is Professor of Fine Art at Newcastle University, a Fellow of the RSS and a member of the International Academy of Ceramics. In 2015 he was awarded Gold Prize at the KOCEF Biennale for Ceramic Sculpture in South Korea. In a recent statement the sculptor said that his ‘specialism is in contemporary sculpture, particularly in sculpture situated in relation to ceramics, craft and architecture’.

Bibliography: Andrew Burton website; D. Buckman, Artists in Britain since 1945 (2 vols: A–L, M–Z), Bristol, 2006; T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of Kensington and Chelsea with Westminster South-West, Watford, 2023, pp. 183–84; G.T. Noszlopy and F. Waterhouse, Public Sculpture of Staffordshire and the Black Country, Liverpool, 2005, p. 53; Royal Society of Sculptors website; P. Usherwood et al, Public Sculpture of North-East England, Liverpool, 2000, pp. 109, 110, 123–24, 254.

Terry Cavanagh November 2022

James Walter Butler (1931–2022)

Sculptor specialising in figurative bronzes, who cited Auguste Rodin, Jules Dalou, Edgar Degas, Charles Sargeant Jagger and Giacomo Manzù as sources of inspiration. Married four times, he was survived by one son and five daughters. Although born in south-east London, he grew up in West Malling, Kent, and attended Maidstone School of Art (1948–50), where he studied sculpture with Sydney Birnie Stewart. Following Stewart’s move to St Martin’s School of Art, London, Butler followed, studying there until 1952. While Butler was at St Martin’s, the stone carver Gerald Giudici gave a class on the use of the pointing machine. Butler began an apprenticeship with him and, excluding a break (1953–55) for national service with the Royal Corps of Signals, remained working for him in a professional capacity until 1960. One of the many jobs he was allocated during this time was the carving of James Woodford’s Queen’s Beasts (1958), which still stand before the Palm House, Kew Gardens. While working with Giudici, Butler attended evening classes under Bernard Sindall at the City and Guilds of London Art School. In 1956, he was awarded a scholarship to the Royal College of Art, returning to the City and Guilds in 1960 to teach drawing and sculpture. He exhibited the Royal Academy of Arts from 1958 and in 1964 was elected an Associate Royal Academician. His election to RA in 1972 was followed by his first important public commission, a portrait statue of President Jomo Kenyatta for Nairobi. He subsequently gave up teaching to work full-time as a professional sculptor. Commissions and official recognition followed. In 1980, he elected a member of Royal West of England Academy and in 1981, a fellow of the Royal Society of British Sculptors. His May Cippico Fountain, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, 1982, was awarded the society’s Otto Beit medal and his statue of Field Marshal Earl Alexander of Tunis, Wellington Barracks, London, 1985, the society’s silver medal. In 2001, Butler received his first commission from the Royal Mint, to design a new Royal Seal of the Realm (based on sittings by the Queen); in 2004, he designed a fifty-pence piece to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the runner Roger Bannister’s breaking of the four-minute mile. He was elected Senior RA in 2006, appointed MBE in 2009 and a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (France) in 2020. His public commissions include Richard III, Leicester, 1980; John Wilkes, Fetter Lane, City of London, 1988; The Leicester Seamstress, Leicester, 1990; a The Stratford Jester, Stratford-upon-Avon, 1994; the footballer Billy Wright, 1996, and the manager Stan Cullis, 2003, for the Molineux Stadium, Wolverhampton; and Queen Elizabeth II, for Runnymede, 2015. Butler also produced war memorials: to the Green Howards, Crépon (near site of Normandy landings), 1996; the Fleet Air Arm (figure of Daedalus), Embankment Gardens, London, 2000; the Rainbow Division (167th Alabama Infantry Regiment) – one cast unveiled on the site of Croix Rouge Farm, Fère-en-Tardenois, Hauts-de-France, 2011, the second in Montgomery, Alabama, 2017; and, also at Montgomery, Return from the Argonne, the unveiling of which Butler attended, on 11 November 2021, a few months before his death.

Bibliography: C. Beetles, ‘James Butler obituary’, The Guardian, 1 April 2022; Chris Beetles Gallery: ‘James Butler, MBE, RA, FRBS, RWA (1931–2022)’; James Butler website; T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of Leicestershire and Rutland, Liverpool, 2000, pp. 81–83, 130–32, 138–39; T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of South London, Liverpool, 2007, pp. 351–52; D.A. Cross, Public Sculpture of Lancashire and Cumbria, Liverpool, 2017, pp. 17–18; R. McKenzie, Public Sculpture of Edinburgh (2 vols), Liverpool, 2018, vol. 1, p. 23; G.T. Noszlopy, Public Sculpture of Birmingham, Liverpool, 1998, p. 99; G.T. Noszlopy, Public Sculpture of Warwickshire, Coventry & Solihull, Liverpool, 2003, pp. 59–60, 134; G.T. Noszlopy and F. Waterhouse, Public Sculpture of Staffordshire and the Black Country, Liverpool, 2005, pp. 42–43, 56, 208–10; Royal Academy of Arts: ‘James Butler (1931–2022)’; Royal Mint Museum: ‘James Butler’; P. Ward-Jackson, Public Sculpture of the City of London, Liverpool, 2003, pp. 84–86, 106–08; P. Ward-Jackson, Public Sculpture of Historic Westminster. Volume 1, Liverpool, 2011, pp. 189, 371–72, 409–10; Who Was Who.

Terry Cavanagh October 2023

Timothy Butler (1806–1885)

Sculptor. In 1824 he was awarded a Silver Medal by the Society of Arts for a plaster model after the antique. By then he was already working in the studio of William Behnes and in 1825, on Behnes’ recommendation, he entered the RA Schools, winning the RA Silver Medal in 1827. Although Butler was chiefly known as a portrait sculptor, showing over one hundred busts at the RA, 1828–79, he was also responsible for creating the model for all the original Lion-head mooring ring supports along the Victoria and Albert Embankments and the two Chelsea Embankment Memorials, 1868–70, London. His marble bust of Dr Jacob Bell, 1863, is in the collection of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society and that of Hugh Falconer, 1866, the collection of the Royal Society; his marble statue of Richard Cobden, 1876, is in the Wool Exchange, Bradford, Yorks. John Adams Acton trained in Butler’s studio.

Bibliography: T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of Kensington and Chelsea with Westminster South-West, Watford, 2023, pp. xxxv, 18-20, 119–21;  T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of South London, Liverpool, 2007, pp. 22–23; I. Roscoe et al, A Biographical Dictionary of Sculptors in Britain 1660–1851, New Haven and London, 2009; Mapping Sculpture; P. Ward-Jackson, Public Sculpture of the City of London, Liverpool, 2003, pp. 418–19.

Terry Cavanagh November 2022

Vincent Butler (1933–2017)

A Manchester-born sculptor of figures, animals and portraits, he trained at Manchester School of Art and Edinburgh College of Art, completing his studies in Milan under Marino Marini and Giacomo Manzù (1955–57). After working in Italy he taught sculpture in Nigeria (1960–63), then joined the staff of the Edinburgh College of Art. Casting most of his work himself, from 1963 he held several one-man shows and exhibited at the Royal Scottish Academy (RSA) and the Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts, including works such as Mother and Child (1986) and Primogenito (1988). His public commissions include the Stations of the Cross, St Mark’s RC Church, Oxgangs Avenue, Edinburgh (1959), a cross for St Paul’s RC Church, Pennywell Road, Edinburgh (1968), and Springburn Heritage and Hope, Glasgow (1989). Winner of the Benno Schotz Prize for Portraiture in 1969, he was elected ARSA in 1972, and RSA in 1977.

Bibliography: P.J.M. McEwan, The Dictionary of Scottish Art and Architecture, Ballater, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, 2004; R. McKenzie, Public Sculpture of Edinburgh (2 vols), Liverpool, 2018, vol. 1, pp. 397–99, vol. 2, pp. 400–01.

Ray McKenzie 2018