Sculptor, said to have been trained by a pupil of Alessandro Algardi, and credited with introducing the Roman Baroque style to Brescia. He was father to two sculptors, Antonio and Alessandro, and uncle to a third, Santo the Younger, who continued the family business. In Brescia, his works include the sculptures on the façade of Santi Faustino e Giovita, 1702, and the figure of Faith in the chapel of the Holy Sacrament, Sant’Agata.
Sources include: Napier, M., and A. Laing, The London Oratory. Centenary 1884–1984, London [1984], pp. 79–80.
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Marble carver born in Stabio, Ticino, in Italian-speaking Switzerland. Castioni settled in Paris where he worked as a praticien in Jules Dalou’s studio. Like his employer, he participated in the 1871 Paris Commune and, following its fall, took refuge in London. By c.1881, Castioni is recorded living in Cheyne Row, Chelsea, and during that decade became an assistant to Joseph Edgar Boehm. In August 1890, Boehm asked Castioni to go to Carrara to select and order some marble blocks. On his return journey, Castioni took a detour to Bellinzona, the cantonal capital of Ticino, where he joined in a popular uprising and shot dead a conservative politician. He fled back to London, the Swiss government requested his extradition and he was duly arrested. However, the 1870 Extradition Act clause stipulating that a fugitive would not be handed over if his crime had been politically motivated, resulted in Castioni’s discharge on appeal. Castioni made the newspapers again in June the following year (1891), but this time as the acknowledged carver of a portrait bust for the British Museum of Sir Henry Layard that his master, Boehm, had taken only as far as a plaster sketch at the time of his sudden death the previous December.
Sources: Landy, B., ‘Drury and Dalou – the benefits of a continental training …’, in Alfred Drury and the New Sculpture (exhibition catalogue), Canterbury, 2013, p. 15; Mapping Sculpture Daily News, 12 November 1890, p. 5; Pall Mall Gazette, 12 June 1891, p. 7; Saturday Review, 15 November 1890, pp. 548–49; The Times, 12 June 1891, p. 10.
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Chris Butler established the foundry in 1990 in a small shed in the grounds of Chirk Castle, hence the foundry’s name. The following year, he moved to larger premises at Llanrhaeadr-ym-Mochnant, Oswestry, Powys; and in 2004 he opened a workshop in Stroud and subsequently another in Liverpool. In 2008, the foundry won the British Small Business Champion award from the Federation of Small Businesses in recognition of the way it had developed its business. Public sculptures include Jemma Pearson’s Sir Edward Elgar, 2005, Hereford Cathedral Close; Ian Rank-Broadley’s two figure groups, 2007, for the Armed Forces Memorial, and Denise Dutton’s Land Girls, 2014, all three for the National Memorial Arboretum, Staffs; Mark Richards’ Captain Matthews Flinders, 2014, Euston Station; Andrew Edwards’ The Beatles, 2015, Pier Head, Liverpool, 2015; Sam Holland and Lynne O’Dowd’s Geoffrey Chaucer, 2016, Canterbury; and Emma Rodgers’ Elaine MorganElaine Morgan, 2022, Mountain Ash, Wales.
Source: Castle Fine Arts Foundry website.
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Sculptor. Although his place of birth and death was Bad Kreuznach, Germany, Cauer exhibited at the RA, London, from 1892 to 1894, giving his address as 46 Glebe Place, Chelsea. His bronze statuette of Thomas MoreThomas More, 1894, is in Chelsea Library. He was the son of Carl Cauer and grandson of Emil Cauer the Elder, both sculptors. Ludwig’s brothers Emil, Robert and Hugo were also sculptors, as were his daughter, Hanna, and son, Eduard. Ludwig trained initially with his father, which included a study trip to Rome, and then with Reinhold Begas and Albert Wolff in Berlin. Following his years in London, Cauer returned to Germany and by 1895 was living in Berlin. He received an honourable mention at the Paris Salon of 1895 and was awarded third medal at the 1900 Paris Exposition Universelle. In Berlin he contributed to two major schemes for which Begas was artistic director: supporting groups for the Kaiser Wilhelm National Monument (1895–97; destr. 1950) and a marble statue of Emperor Charles IV (1899) for the Siegesallee (demolished post Second World War). A replica of this latter statue was cast in bronze in 1900 by Martin & Piltzing of Berlin (the founders for Cauer’s Thomas More statuette) and erected in Tangermünde. Cauer was elected to the German Academy in 1916 and returned to Bad Kreuznach in 1918 where he worked mainly as a funerary sculptor.
Sources: ‘Kaiser-Wilhelm-Nationaldenkmal’, Wikipedia (German); ‘Liste der Figurengruppen in der Berliner Siegesallee’ figurengruppen, Wikipedia (German); ‘Ludwig Cauer’, Wikipedia (German); Mapping Sculpture; Oxford Art Online – Benezit Dictionary of Artists.
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Ludwig Cauer (photo: public domain)
Sculptor born at Rheims where he was apprenticed as a modeller in the studio of Hippolyte Bulteau. He afterwards received a scholarship from the town to enter the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris, where he studied under Alexandre Falguière, François Jouffroy and most importantly Louis-Auguste Roubaud (‘le jeune’). In 1880, he won a Prix de Rome with his Mère Spartiate, in 1885 and 1886 obtained honourable mentions, and in 1890 was elected a member of the Société des Artistes Français. Shortly afterwards he moved to England, where he stayed for about 15 years, living in Brixton, south London. He showed at the RA from 1893 onwards, his exhibits comprising portrait busts and statues in both bronze and marble. For a number of years he worked for Farmer & Brindley, in whose employment he executed the figure for the memorial to Cardinal Newman, 1896, Brompton Road, Kensington; effigies for the monuments to Bishop Richard Durnford, 1896, Chichester Cathedral, and Hugh Grosvenor, First Duke of Westminster, 1901, St. Mary, Eccleston, Cheshire; four marble and four bronze statues of explorers and navigators, 1897–98, for the Palm House, Sefton Park, Liverpool; and statues of Bishop Talbot and Sir Samuel Bignold, (c.1906), for niches on the frontage of G.J. Skipper’s Norwich Union building, Norwich. Chavalliaud also executed the memorial to Sarah Siddons (1897) for Paddington Green. He appears to have returned to France in the 1900s and died at Boissy-sans-Avoir, Yvelines.
Sources: Gleichen, Lord E., London’s Open-Air Statuary, London, 1928; Gray, A.S., Edwardian Architecture, London, 1985; Mapping Sculpture; Oxford Art Online – Benezit Dictionary of Artists.
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Tristan de Pyègne, Léon-Joseph Chavalliaud, drawing (photo: public domain).
Sculptor born in London, son of the sculptor Robert Lindsey Clark. He was educated in Cheltenham and studied sculpture under his father from 1905. He then attended the City and Guilds of London Art School, 1910–14, and the RA Schools, 1919–21 (having served in the Artists’ Rifles, Royal Sussex Regiment, 1914–18, where he rose to the rank of captain, received a mention in dispatches, and was awarded a DSO). Examples of his designs for war memorials were shown in the 1919 ‘War Memorials’ exhibition at the RA; his executed memorials include St Saviour’s War Memorial, 1922, Borough High Street, south London; The Cameronians Memorial, 1924, Kelvingrove Park, Glasgow; and, with Sue Dring, the Belgian Soldiers’ Memorial, c.1920, St Mary’s RC Cemetery, Kensal Green, London (he was awarded the Palm of the Order of the Crown of Belgium in 1932). Other commissions include a ceramic relief of bakers, 1926, 12–13 Widegate Street, London; a statue of William Dennis, ‘the potato king’, 1930, outside the Town Hall, Kirton-in-Holland, Lincolnshire; architectural sculpture on 159 Aldgate High Street, London; and carved reliefs in Westminster Cathedral. Clark showed at the RA, 1920–52. After becoming a Carmelite tertiary, he executed various works for The Friars, at Aylesford, Kent, 1949, and featured in the Friary’s publication, Image of Carmel, 1974. He was ARBS 1922–45; FRBS 1945–65; and PRBS 1958–59; his relief of St Thomas More was illustrated in RBS: Modern British Sculpture, 1939.
Sources: Buckman, D., Artists in Britain since 1945 (2 vols: A–L, M–Z), Bristol, 2006; Mapping Sculpture; Who Was Who.
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Sculptor and teacher born in London. He studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, 1946–49, under Randolph Schwabe, returning later as a senior lecturer in sculpture. He was elected FRBS in 1953. His Queen Matilda (now Battle Abbey) was included in the 1960 LCC Battersea Park Open-Air Exhibition. His public commissions include a wall sculpture in wrought iron and plastic wood depicting ‘country pursuits in the smoke issuing from a moving train’, 1954, for the interior of the British Railways London Office; Rampant Enfield Beast, c.1961, a bronze sculpture for Enfield Town Hall and Civic Centre; Man with Eagle, 1966, for Barclays Bank, King’s Road, Chelsea; a heraldic porch carving for West Ham Technical College; an altarpiece and Lady Chapel screen in oak for Lagos Cathedral; a group for the forecourt of the British Shoe Corporation, Leicester; a water sculpture for Harrow Civic Centre (with a wrought iron wall sculpture for the Council Chamber); a bronze sculpture for the Royal College of Pathology, London; a commemorative bronze for University College Hospital, London; and a statue of Chief (Dr) Henry Fajemirokun, in bronze-fed polymer for a site near Ibadan, Nigeria, 1979.
Sources: Buckman, D., Artists in Britain since 1945 (2 vols: A–L, M–Z), Bristol, 2006; various.
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Sculptor, born in Paris, raised in Essex. He studied under W.S. Frith at South London Technical School of Art before entering the RA Schools in 1889 where his masters included J.E. Boehm and H.H. Armstead. An exhibitor at the RA throughout his life, he first showed there in the year he joined the Schools. After leaving, he spent some years in Paris. On his return, his work was noticed by the First Commissioner of HM Office of Works who commissioned a fountain for Hyde Park; following the deterioration of the original, a replica was installed in its place. In common with much of his ideal work, the fountain shows the influence of Alfred Gilbert and, in its mild eroticism, that of contemporary trends in French decorative sculpture. In 1896, Colton showed three compositions in enamel on silver with the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, which led, in the following year, to his election as a member of the Society (he withdrew in 1900). Colton’s first work exciting major interest was The Image Finder, shown at the RA in 1897 (plaster) and 1899 (bronze; a cast is in Nottingham Castle Museum and Art Gallery). The critic M.H. Spielmann hailed it as ‘a really fine thing [deserving] to be included in the list of notable works produced by English sculptors’. Its subject was a lean-muscled, sinewy Indian, naked but for a loincloth, heaving a piece of sculpture from the ground. The public attending the 1899 showing at the RA would have been able to see, alongside it, Colton’s The Girdle, which, first shown in plaster only the previous year, demonstrated his equally fluent talent for portraying the female nude. The Girdle was purchased by the Chantrey Fund and is now in the Tate. In 1903 he was elected ARA (RA in 1919). Soon after came his first major public commission. In the 1905 RA he exhibited a plaster bust of the Maharajah of Mysore (marble in 1906) and in 1907, the marble statue intended for India. In 1906, his statue of King Edward VII was unveiled in King’s Lynn, Norfolk, and in 1908, his Worcestershire South African War Memorial. Two years later his Royal Artillery South African War Memorial was unveiled in The Mall, London. The centre part of this memorial was re-used as a First World War memorial for Stafford (unveiled 1923). Colton was a member of the AWG, 1894–1903, of the RBS from 1905 (vice-president 1916; president 1920); and professor of sculpture at the RA Schools, 1907–11. His health was never robust and he died at the age of 53 at his home, 5 St Mary Abbots Place, Kensington, having failed to recover from a medical operation.
Sources: Baldry, A.L., ‘Modern British Sculptors: W. Robert Colton, A.R.A.’, The Studio, November 1915, pp. 93–99; Mapping Sculpture</a; Royal Academy of Arts website; Spielmann, M.H., ‘W.R. Colton, the new associate of the Royal Academy’, Magazine of Art, 1903, pp. 300–04; The Times, 14 November 1921, p. 14 (obit.); Whitely, W.T., ‘W. Robert Colton, A.R.A.’, Art Journal, 1911, pp. 177–82.
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Sculptor and painter, born in London. Although she served an apprenticeship with Barbara Hepworth, she is otherwise self-taught. She works in both abstract and figurative modes, both of which she employed in successive versions of a single work, the Yalta Memorial, 1980–82 and 1983–86, Cromwell Gardens, South Kensington. Regarding her abstract work, she has described herself as ‘basically a landscape sculptor using natural forces such as wind, water, gravity, sun and shadow’. Major commissions for abstract sculptures include Wave, 129 ft high, stainless steel and carbon fibre, Parkwest Plaza, Dublin (it was, at the time of its construction [2003], believed to be the world’s highest mobile); also Threshold, Darlington Arts Centre; Janus Arch, Longleat; and Tipping Triangles, Aston University, all stainless steel; and in the USA, Arpeggio, stainless steel and granite, Heinz Plaza, Pittsburgh; and Poise, white marble dust, resin and stainless steel, Chattanooga. Her public statues include: General Charles de Gaulle, 1993, Carlton Gardens, London; Colonel Sir David Stirling, 2002, Doune, Stirlingshire; and Laurence Olivier, 2007, National Theatre, South Bank, London. She has exhibited widely in the UK, Denmark, Paris, Bologna, USA, Dubai and Australia. Examples of her work are held by the Arts Council, House of Commons, Eton College, National Portrait Gallery and the Jewish Museum, New York. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Sculptors.
Sources: Angela Connor website; Buckman, D., Artists in Britain since 1945 (2 vols: A–L, M–Z), Bristol, 2006; Ward-Jackson, P., Public Sculpture of Historic Westminster. Volume 1, Liverpool, 2011.
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Sculptor and painter who was born in Cape Town, South Africa, but following the death of his mother moved with his father to England. Copnall studied at Goldsmiths School of Art and the RA Schools (finishing at the latter in 1924). He began as a painter, but turned to sculpture 1929 having met Eric Kennington and been strongly impressed by his work. Copnall exhibited widely, at the RA (1925–70), the London Gallery, New English Art Club, Royal Society of Arts, and at the Paris Salon. He was awarded the MBE in 1946 for his services during the Second World War as a camouflage officer. He was head of the Sir John Cass School of Art, 1945–53, and President of the RBS (now RSS), 1961–66. Copnall’s major public commissions include stone relief figures, 1931–34, on Grey Wornum’s RIBA building Portland Place, London; the easternmost stone relief figure, 1936–38, on the Adelphi Building, John Adam St, London; The Word (The Lambeth Preacher)), 1947–49, Lambeth Mission and St Mary’s Church, Lambeth Road; Carrara marble reliefs of actors and playwrights, 1959, formerly on the balcony fronts of St James’s House (demolished 1986), erected on the site of the St James’s Theatre, Angel Court, London; and Stag, 1962 (RBS Silver Medal), aluminium, formerly Stag Square, Victoria, relocated to Maidstone, 2004. Copnall’s Sculptor’s Manual, published by Oxford in 1971, includes an account of his pioneering investigations into sculpture in fibreglass resin, the first result of which was The Swan Upper, 1963, ICT House, northern approach to Putney Bridge, and the best known probably Becket, 1973, St Paul’s Cathedral churchyard.
Sources: Bainbridge Copnall. Painter and Sculptor. Memoirs with a Postscript, Bath, 2018; Buckman, D., Artists in Britain since 1945 (2 vols: A–L, M–Z), Bristol, 2006; Strachan, W.J., Open Air Sculpture in Britain, London, 1984; The Times, 19 October 1973, p. 20 (obit.); Who Was Who.
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Corbarelli father and sons, specialised in the decorative use of inlays of semi-precious stones (pietre dure). The father, Francesco (d. 1718), may have been born in Florence, but he and his sons Antonio (d. 1735) and Domenico (1656–1732) operated principally in Brescia, Padua, Vicenza and Modena. In Brescia, the family produced the altar of the Chapel of the Blessed Rosary in S. Domenico (now in Brompton Oratory) and the high altar of the church of Santa Maria della Carità (1685–96).
Sources: ‘Corbarelli’, Wikipedia; ‘Francesco Corbarelli’‘, Wikipedia; Napier, M., and A. Laing, The London Oratory. Centenary 1884–1984, London [1984], pp. 81–82n22.
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Australian-born architect. He studied in the RA School of Architecture (1890–95) and the Slade School of Fine Art. He was in partnership with Sir Charles Nicholson, 1895–1916, their most important collaboration being the remodelling of Burton Manor, Cheshire (Grade II, 1903). Corlette also worked on government projects for Jamaica and Trinidad. His war memorials include Kensington (with figure carving by F.W. Pomeroy) and in Sydney, New South Wales, the University War Memorial and Archibald Memorial Fountain (in collaboration with François Sicard).
Sources: Royal Academy of Arts website; Who Was Who.
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Sculptor. He studied at Camberwell School of Art, 1983–86. In 1987, he was selected by Eduardo Paolozzi for the RA’s Jack Goldhill Award for Sculpture; according to Cornish, he was the ‘youngest ever recipient’. He attended the RCA 1989–92, during which time he was awarded a scholarship to travel to India to study the work of the Aiyanar potter priests. In 1993, he was elected ARBS. In 2000, he was appointed official tour artist on Prince Charles’s diplomatic tour of Eastern Europe and in 2002 official artist with the British Army in Kosovo. He is an academic board member, and occasional tutor, at the Prince’s Drawing School (a charitable trust founded by Prince Charles). Cornish’s commissions include Paddington Bear, 2000, bronze, Paddington Station, London; Stag, 2002, bronze, St James’s Square, London; Christ in the World, 2008–09, bronze, Church of Our Lady Immaculate and St Philip Neri, Uckfield, East Sussex – dubbed by the media, ‘Jesus in Jeans’, because of the figure’s contemporary dress; Vaughan Williams, 2010, stoneware clay, Chelsea Embankment; Mare and Foal, 2013, bronze, Berkeley Homes, Highwood, Horsham; and roundel portraits of G.F. and Mary Watts, 2014, on the Watts Gallery building, Compton, Guildford, Surrey.
Sources: Marcus Cornish website; Google Arts and Culture; Wikipedia.
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Theo Crosby was a South African-born architect, designer, writer and founder member of the Pentagram Design Group. He began as a modernist architect, but later questioned the quality, social adequacy and ideology of the vast post-war building programmes. He became a member of the Preservation Policy Group, which established basic conservation studies and some essential legislation. He was architect to the Globe Theatre project for twenty-five years, sharing with Sam Wanamaker a vision of the Globe helping to revitalise the area and developing bonds with the local community. In 1990, he married Polly Hope (for both, their second marriage). Born June Mary Anne Stockwell, Hope studied at Heatherley School of Fine Art, Chelsea Polytechnic and the Slade School of Art. She was a painter, illustrator, sculptor, ceramicist, set designer and writer, and exhibited internationally from 1958 in both solo and group exhibitions. In 1969, her first novel, Here (Away from It All), published under the pseudonym Maryann Forrest, garnered praise from Anthony Burgess. She executed many portraits, including one of Roy Strong in 1985 (employing yarn, fur, wax, applied work, painted wood and glass; V&A, museum number: T.465-1985). Her decorative work for the Globe Theatre included, in 1991, a bronze sculpture of Midsummer Night’s Dream, and, in 1997, a 20-metre ceramic mural with four corner sculptures on a zodiac theme. Examples of her work are in the Government Art Collection: Transport, Bangladesh (silk on linen), and Birds and Animals of Bangladesh (terracotta relief panel), both 1990.
Sources: ‘Obituary: Professor Theo Crosby’, Independent, 15 September 1994; Powers, A., ‘Crosby, Theo (1925–1994), designer and architect; also including June Mary Anne Hope (1933–2013)’, ODNB, 2011; Polly Hope, Jobbing Artist; The Times: (i) 21 September 1994, p. 21; (ii) 13 July 2009, p. 11; (iii) 14 December 2013, p. 95.
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Sculptor born Marjorie Vernon Lockey at Barton Regis, Gloucestershire; she married Lionel Crossley in 1916. She was an ARBS from 1947 (elected honorary treasurer in 1961) and from 1944 was listed as a teacher of modelling at the Polytechnic School of Art, Regent Street. She lived for some years in Felixstowe, Suffolk, and was a member of the Ipswich Art Club, 1946–50, her exhibits in these years including, in addition to portraits, The Journey by Night, 1947, St Mary Abbots Church, Kensington, and Descent from the Cross, 1949 (untraced). In 1955, Crossley was one of 12 sculptors invited by the Dean and Chapter of St Paul’s Cathedral to work as a team under the artistic directorship of Josefina de Vasconcellos to produce a representation in plaster of the Christmas stable at Bethlehem. Other collaborators included Franta Belsky, T.B. Huxley Jones and his wife, Gwynneth Holt, and Charles Wheeler. Crossley’s contribution was a group of The Three Shepherds (illustrated in The Times, 29 November 1955, p. 16; the complete ensemble was illustrated on the front page of the ILN, 24 December 1955). Crossley lived in London from about 1950, her final address being 70 Madeira Road, Streatham.
Sources: ILN: (i) 3 December 1955, p. 971; (ii) 24 December 1955, p. [1083]; Mapping Sculpture; Suffolk Artists; The Times: (i) 11 October 1955, p. 5; (ii) 29 October 1955, p. 16; (iii) 20 December 1955, p. 8; (iv) 27 March 1961, p. 6.
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