Charles Hadcock (b. 1965)

Sculptor born in Derby, now based in Lancashire. He studied at Gloucester College of Arts and Technology, 1984–87, and the RCA, 1987–89. In April 2007 he received the Queens Award for Enterprise Promotion. In 2008 was made a fellow of the RBS (solo exhibition at RBS in 2009). Other solo exhibitions include Reed’s Wharf Gallery, 1996; University of Essex, 1997; Canary Wharf, 2003 and 2011; and Encounter Contemporary, 2014 (in Threadneedle Street) and 2016 (in Mayfair). In 2014, Hadcock was commissioned as a Deputy Lieutenant of Lancashire. Public sculptures include Passacaglia, 1998, Brighton Sea Front; Caesura VI, 2000, Holland Park; Adagio, 2007, Salford Quays, Greater Manchester; and Helisphere, 2009, and Torsion II, 2009–11, Heron Quays and Bank Street respectively, Isle of Dogs. Hadcock’s abstract sculptures reflect his interest in geology, engineering, industrial processes, mathematics and geometry, the titles often reflecting his love of poetry and music.

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, p. 184; T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of South London, Liverpool, 2007, pp. 134–35; D.A. Cross, Public Sculpture of Lancashire and Cumbria, Liverpool, 2017, p. 79; Charles Hadcock website; F. Lloyd et al, Public Sculpture of Outer South and West London, Liverpool, 2011, p. 110; G.T. Noszlopy and F. Waterhouse, Public Sculpture of Staffordshire and the Black Country, Liverpool, 2005, pp. 51–52; J. Seddon et al, Public Sculpture of Sussex, Liverpool, 2014, pp. 22, 23.

Terry Cavanagh November 2022

Thomas Hadden (1871–1940)

Architectural metalworker and founder of the ironworking firm that traded under his name in Edinburgh from 1901 until 1975. Specialising in decorative work that combined delicacy of design with robustness of structure, he worked with many leading architects, but is particularly associated with Sir Robert Lorimer, for whom he produced screens and gates at the Thistle Chapel in St Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh (1909–11), and the steel casket that forms the centrepiece of the Shrine at the Scottish National War Memorial (1924–27).

Bibliography: D.A. Cross, Public Sculpture of Lancashire and Cumbria, Liverpool, 2017, pp. 139–40; R. McKenzie, Public Sculpture of Edinburgh (2 vols), Liverpool, 2018, vol. 1, pp. 434, 466; E. Wright, ‘Thomas Hadden: architectural metalworker’, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, no. 121, 1991, pp. 427–35.

Ray McKenzie 2018

Chris Hall (b. 1942)

Sculptor of works in stone, wood and bronze. Born in Nottingham, he is a graduate of Loughborough College of Art and Edinburgh College of Art, where he studied under Eric Schilsky. His work is mostly figurative or inspired by the natural world, and is often placed in the landscape and at sacred sites, such as the cloister of St Mary’s Abbey, Iona, where he executed a series of capital carvings between 1969 and 1997. Other public commissions include a group of marble sculptures of a Paper Boat, commissioned in 1997 by Ian Hamilton Finlay for his garden, Little Sparta, as a tribute to the sculptor George Wyllie. In addition to his public commissions and numerous private memorials, he has exhibited widely throughout the UK, Europe and the USA, and currently has a permanent display of his work at Quarry Wood, Hundalee, near Jedburgh, Scottish Borders, where he has his studio.

Bibliography: Chris Hall website; R. McKenzie, Public Sculpture of Edinburgh (2 vols), Liverpool, 2018, vol. 1, p. 170.

Ray McKenzie 2018

Emmeline Halse (1853–1930)

Sculptor born in Bayswater, London, a daughter of George Halse, also a sculptor. Shortly after her birth, the family moved to 15 Clarendon Road, Notting Hill, where her father built a sculpture studio which he encouraged his daughter to use. After learning the basics with her father, Halse studied, from 1876 to the early 1880s at the RA Schools, where, in 1877, 1878 and 1880, she won silver medals and in 1883 a second prize of £10 for a model of a design – this despite her training being restricted to copying from plaster casts of classical sculpture, owing to the exclusion of women students from the life classes until 1903. Following the RA Schools, Halse went to Paris, where she studied under the neo-classical sculptor, Frédéric Louis Désiré Bogino. At some time during the 1880s or ’90s (perhaps in Paris), Halse met her close friend the painter Helen Trevor, whose letters to her she published – after Trevor’s death – as Ramblings of an Artist (1901). Halse exhibited regularly at the RA (32 pieces from 1878 to 1920), Glasgow Institute of Fine Arts (22 pieces) and Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool (12 pieces), plus the Paris Salon (four pieces). Most of her works were small-scale domestic subjects or portraits; her most significant work, the reredos, 1889–90, for the Church of St John the Evangelist, Lansdowne Crescent, Notting Hill, she carried out without payment.

Bibliography: T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of Kensington and Chelsea with Westminster South-West, Watford, 2023, pp. 239–41; E. Farningham, Emmeline Halse, Sculptor 1853–1930, 2002 (unpublished; National Art Library, ref. 608.AD.0307); ‘Halse, Emmeline’, King’s College London: Victorian Lives; Mapping Sculpture.

Terry Cavanagh November 2022

Jake Harvey (b. 1948)

Brought up in Yetholm, in the Scottish Borders, Harvey studied at Edinburgh College of Art, where he was later appointed Head of Sculpture. His work arises from an engagement with what he describes as ‘earth-related materials’, such as cast iron, limestone, granite and basalt, which are worked into abstract forms of Zen-like stillness and simplicity. References to Scottish pre-history frequently occur in his compositions, as in Cup Stones of 1993, while more contemporary concerns are often evoked by a vocabulary of symbolic pictograms, such as on his most important public commission, the large bronze and steel Hugh MacDiarmid Memorial (1982–84), sited near the poet’s birthplace at Langholm, Dumfries and Galloway. In 2007, he embarked on the Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded ‘STONE Project’, a collaborative investigation into the history, culture and anthropology of stone as an art material that culminated in the publication, STONE: A Legacy and Inspiration for Art, in 2011. Since 1976 he has lived and worked at the former smiddy in Maxton Cross, and is currently Emeritus Professor of Sculpture at Edinburgh College of Art.

Bibliography: Art First, ‘Jake Harvey – biography’; M. Macdonald, Scottish Art, London and New York, 2000, pp. 213–15; R. McKenzie, Public Sculpture of Edinburgh (2 vols), Liverpool, 2018, vol. 1, pp. 301–03.

Ray McKenzie 2018

Joseph Hayes (1869–1916)

Born in Aldershot, he was apprenticed to a stone carver in London before establishing his own practice as an architectural sculptor. He appears to have moved to Edinburgh before the turn of the twentieth century, and by 1910 had joined the Arts and Crafts collective at the Dean Studio on Lynedoch Place. Among his associates there was the architect Robert (later Sir Robert) Lorimer, who employed him as the overseer of the carving programme of the Thistle Chapel in St Giles Cathedral (1909–11). Hayes taught carving at Edinburgh College of Art (1907–08), and in 1912 gave a lecture to the Edinburgh Architectural Association entitled ‘Scale of Ornament in Architecture’, in which he advised carvers to ‘spring forward with renewed vigour’ on the basis of an intelligent appreciation of tradition. A good illustration of his own adherence to this precept was the decoration at the entrance to the now-demolished Labour Exchange on Lauriston Place (1913), in which he combined a traditional rendering of the royal arms of Scotland with a frieze of craftsmen’s tools replacing conventional foliage. He served as a corporal with the Black Watch (Royal Highlanders) in the First World War and died at the Battle of the Somme in September 1916. He is buried in France.

Bibliography: E. Cumming, Hand, Heart and Soul: the Arts and Crafts Movement in Scotland, Edinburgh, 2006, pp. 10, 144–45; R. McKenzie, Public Sculpture of Edinburgh (2 vols), Liverpool, 2018, vol. 1, pp. 318–19; Mapping Sculpture; Scotsman: (i) 12 December 1912, p. 6; (ii) 23 October 1913, p. 11; (iii) 3 September 1917, p. 8.

Ray McKenzie 2018

Harry Hems (1842–1916)

Ecclesiastical and architectural sculptor, born in London. He initially worked as a cutler, following the trade of both his father and grandfather, but subsequently learnt wood and stone carving, honing his skills in London and Italy. His first major contract was for the architectural carving on the Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter (1866–68). He at first took lodgings near the museum but eventually settled permanently in the city, establishing a flourishing workshop, the Ecclesiastical Art Works. In 1868, Hems married and in 1877, his son Wilfred, who would succeed his father as head of the firm, was born. The firm showed, and were usually recipients of medals and prizes, at the Centennial International Exhibition, Philadelphia (1876), the Exposition Universelle, Paris (1878), the Chicago World Fair (1893) and the Antwerp Exhibition (1894). For Exeter, Hems designed the Livery Dole Martyrs’ Memorial, 1909, but the commissions considered by contemporaries to be his most important were the restoration, for Sir Arthur Blomfield, of the high altar screen, 1884–99, at St Albans Cathedral, Herts, and the design and execution of the reredos, 1912, for St Louis Cathedral, USA.

Bibliography: T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of Kensington and Chelsea with Westminster South-West, Watford, 2023, pp. 197, 250; Daily Mail, 6 January 1916, p. 3; ‘Harry Hems – ecclesiastical sculptor and wood carver’ (updated 1 March 2019), Exeter Memories; Mapping Sculpture; D. Merritt and F. Greenacre, with K. Eustace, Public Sculpture of Bristol, Liverpool, 2011, pp. 16–18; E. Morris and E. Roberts, Public Sculpture of Cheshire and Merseyside, Liverpool, 2012, pp. xvii, 14; The Times, 8 January 1916, p. 3.

Terry Cavanagh November 2022

Ann Henderson (1921–1976)

Scottish sculptor, born into a farming family at Thurso, Caithness, and educated at Miller Academy, where her creative aptitude was recognised and encouraged. She studied sculpture at Edinburgh College of Art (1940–45), winning a travelling scholarship that enabled her to study at the École des Beaux-Arts with Marcel Gimond, who had in turn studied with Aristide Maillol and Auguste Rodin. On her return to Edinburgh, she resumed her post as a junior assistant teacher in the Sculpture School at Edinburgh College of Art, later becoming a Lecturer and eventually Senior Lecturer. In 1954, she was awarded the Royal Scottish Academy Guthrie Prize, which enabled her to travel to Greece, and was later instrumental in organising many important exhibitions, including the ‘International Open Air Exhibition of Sculpture’ at Pittencrieff Park, Dunfermline, in 1969, and ‘Eight Edinburgh Sculptors’, 1972. Her practice as a sculptor was divided between her studio in Edinburgh and her croft in Caithness, where she bred Highland ponies. She exhibited regularly at the Society of Scottish Artists, the Royal Scottish Academy and the Royal Academy in London, and her many public commissions include the sandstone Man with a Sheep in Market Square, Galashiels (1971).

Bibliography: Anon, Ann Henderson: a retrospective (ex. cat.), Thurso, Caithness, n.d. [2011]; R. McKenzie, Public Sculpture of Edinburgh (2 vols), Liverpool, 2018, vol. 1, pp. 84, 417.

Ray McKenzie 2018

Sean Henry (b. 1965)

Sculptor born in Woking, Surrey. After a foundation course at Farnham School of Art & Design, 1982, he took a degree course in ceramics at Bristol Polytechnic, 1984–87. In 1990–91, he was Visiting Artist at the University of California. His earlier works were mostly in fired clay, but in 1994 he used bronze for the first time. In 1998, he won the Villiers David Prize, the first sculptor to do so. Henry has exhibited widely both in the UK and abroad. He had his first solo exhibition in 1988 at the Anatol Orient Gallery, Portobello Road. Major solo exhibitions include ‘Sean Henry Sculpture’, RBS, London, 2009, and Forum Gallery, New York, 2010; and ‘Conflux: a union of the sacred and the anonymous’, Salisbury Cathedral, 2011. His public sculptures include Walking Man, 1998, Holland Park; Man with Potential Selves, 2003, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne; the 13m-high Couple, 2007, the UK’s first permanent offshore sculpture, in Newbiggin Bay, Northumberland; Standing Man, 2010, Stockholm; Lying Man, 2011, Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park, Michigan, USA; and four figures at various sites in his birthplace, Woking, 2018. In addition, Henry was commissioned to provide a nine-figure installation inside One Basinghall Avenue (Standard Chartered Bank HQ), City of London in 2008; further casts of one of these figures, Walking Woman, were subsequently sited in Oslo, Norway; Bad Homburg, Germany; and Colchester, Essex (this last being paired with Man with a Cup in 2017). In 2015, Henry was commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery to create a painted bronze portrait of Sir Tim Berners Lee (founder of the World Wide Web). Henry is a figurative sculptor whose works, despite their compelling presence, are not truly lifelike, being characteristically under- or over-life-size, the vigorous modelling of the surfaces and fluid application of paint clearly asserting their hand-crafted natures.

Bibliography: T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of Kensington and Chelsea with Westminster South-West, Watford, 2023, pp. 181, 183; T. Flynn, Sean Henry, London, 2008; Sean Henry website.

Terry Cavanagh November 2022

Charles Henshaw & Sons Ltd

Firm of architectural and decorative metalworkers established by Charles Henshaw and his three sons in 1904 after moving from Birmingham to Edinburgh. Its foundry was in Russell Road, Gorgie, and among the commissions it carried out were the decorative lamp standards surrounding the Shaftesbury Monument in Piccadilly Circus, London, the ‘Versailles-style’ chandelier in the Archers’ Hall, Buccleuch Street, Edinburgh, and the First World War memorial in Waverley station. The company still trades today, and specialises in architectural projects incorporating large-scale schemes of iron and glass, such as the façade of the Harvey Nichols store in St Andrew Square, and the atrium of the Marriott Hotel in Kensington, London.

Bibliography: S. Bain, ‘Henshaw is determined to be the architect of success’, (Glasgow) Herald, 31 August 2013; R. McKenzie, Public Sculpture of Edinburgh (2 vols), Liverpool, 2018, vol. 1, pp. 46, 234, 422–23, 454, vol. 2, pp. 21, 26, 82, 305–14, 496, 515; R. McKenzie, Public Sculpture of Glasgow, Liverpool, 2002, p. 27.

Ray McKenzie 2018

Amelia Robertson Paton Hill (1820–1904)

The foremost woman sculptor in nineteenth-century Scotland, and an accomplished painter and book illustrator, she was born into a notable artistic family from Dunfermline that included her brothers, the painters Sir Joseph Noël Paton and Waller Hugh Paton, and her nephew, the sculptor Waller Hubert Paton. She was also the second wife of the painter and pioneering photographer David Octavius Hill, whose position as the Secretary of the Royal Scottish Academy from 1830 to 1869 almost certainly aided her in combating the social and institutional obstacles she encountered in her bid for recognition as a professional sculptor. For her part, she provided Hill with valuable assistance in completing his magnum opus, the colossal Disruption Picture (1843-66), which commemorated the founding of the Free Church of Scotland. Her principal output was in marble portrait busts, her subjects including many of the leading cultural figures of the day, such as Thomas Carlyle (1866–67), Sir George Harvey (1867), and Sir David Brewster (1867), as well as D. O. Hill himself (1868; bronze copy on his grave in Dean Cemetery, Edinburgh, 1880). She also completed a number of major public commissions, including a monument to Robert Burns in Dumfries (1881–82), her last major work. As D. O. Hill’s widow, she lived in semi-retirement at Newington Lodge, Mayfield, Edinburgh, but continued to exhibit at the Royal Scottish Academy until two years before her death.

Bibliography: T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of Kensington and Chelsea with Westminster South-West, Watford, 2023, pp. xxxvii; P. de Montfort, ‘Hill [Paton], Amelia Robertson’, ODNB, 2004; R. McKenzie, Public Sculpture of Edinburgh (2 vols), Liverpool, 2018, vol. 2, pp. 11, 220–26; 401–02, 508, 509, 515; S.A. Tooley, ‘A Famous Lady Sculptor. An interview with Mrs D.O. Hill’, The Young Woman: a monthly journal and review, no. 35, August 1895, pp. 361–67.

Ray McKenzie 2018

James Hill (fl. 1756–1770)

Little is known of James Hill except that he was recorded in 1763 as being a ‘statuary in the Strand’, London, and that he exhibited bas reliefs of classical subjects and wax models at the Society of Artists. His statue of King George II, 1759, formerly in front of the Old Royal Infirmary, Edinburgh, is now in the National Galleries of Scotland store, Granton.

Bibliography: R. McKenzie, Public Sculpture of Edinburgh (2 vols), Liverpool, 2018, vol. 1, pp. xxii, 426–29; I. Roscoe et al, A Biographical Dictionary of Sculptors in Britain 1660–1851, New Haven and London, 2009.

Ray McKenzie 2018

Vernon Hill (1887–1972)

Sculptor, draughtsman, illustrator and lithographer, born in Halifax, Yorkshire. He was resident in London from about 1908, working for the publisher John Lane, illustrating, for example, The Arcadian Calendar, 1910, and Stephen Phillips’s The New Inferno, 1911. After the First World War, he worked chiefly as a sculptor, much of his most important work being for Sir Edward Maufe: for example, Guildford Cathedral, 1932–56, executing, inter alia, the memorial to John Harold Greig over the inside of the sacristy door, the figure of St Ursula over the inside of St Ursula’s porch, and the bronze reliefs on the doors of the south entrance; St Thomas the Apostle, Hanwell, 1934, where he carved the doves over the north door, and within, a Virgin and Child and a font; St John’s College, Cambridge, where he carved a coat-of-arms for the north court, 1938–40; St Columba’s Church of Scotland, Pont Street, Chelsea, where he executed all the decorative carving, plus a figure of the saint over the main entrance, 1950–54; and the Runnymede Air Forces Memorial, where he carved stone figures representing Courage, Victory and Justice (completed 1953). Hill also executed six figures for the interior of John Edward Dixon-Spain’s St Joan of Arc RC church at Farnham, 1930: St Joan of Arc; St George; St Joseph and the Holy Child; the Virgin and Child; St Margaret; and St Catherine. Hill was included in the Fine Art Society’s 1986 exhibition, ‘Sculpture in Britain Between the Wars’. In 1972, the artist’s widow bequeathed to the Southampton City Art Gallery a large collection of her husband’s drawings and etchings.

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. 78, 79; F. Lloyd et al, Public Sculpture of Outer South and West London, Liverpool, 2011, pp. 71–72; Mapping Sculpture; relevant volumes from Pevsner’s ‘Buildings of England’ series.

Terry Cavanagh November 2022

Vincent Hill (born c.1880; active 1900–46)

Sculptor born in Cardiff. He studied at the RCA under Lantéri. A decorative panel he had submitted for a college exercise on the subject of ‘Art’ was illustrated in the Arts & Crafts Magazine, 1904. In the following year, he was one of the sculpture students selected by Lantéri to execute a figure, in his case, John Constable, for Aston Webb’s new façade of the V&A Museum. In 1906, Lantéri seconded Goscombe John’s nomination of Hill’s membership of the RBS. Hill exhibited at the RA once in 1908, giving his address as 29 Mimosa Street, Fulham. By the 1920s, he had moved to Beverley, Yorkshire, and in 1921 he carved the four seated figures around the base of R.H. Whiteing’s Beverley War Memorial.

Bibliography: T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of Kensington and Chelsea with Westminster South-West, Watford, 2023, p. 168; Mapping Sculpture; Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, 1769–2018 – a Chronicle. Index.

Terry Cavanagh November 2022

Simon Hitchens (b. 1967)

Sculptor of abstract forms born in Sussex, now based in Somerset. His father John (b. 1940), grandfather Ivon (1893–1979) and great-grandfather Alfred (1861–1942) were all painters. Simon Hitchens studied at West Surrey College of Art & Design, 1985–86, and Bristol Polytechnic’s faculty of art and design, 1987–90, where he gained a degree in sculpture. He was assistant to sculptors Peter Randall-Page, 1990, and Anish Kapoor, 1993–96. The British Council selected Hitchens for sculpture symposiums in Slovakia, 1994, and Colombia, 1996. In 1998, he was elected ARBS. In the same year, four of his sculptures were bought for the Hiscox Plc art collection, London. In 1999, he executed his first publicly sited sculpture, Quiet Understanding, granite, for Conquest Hospital, Hastings. Other public sculptures include Coastline, 2005, granite and resin, Workington, Cumbria; Parallel Presence, 2007, granite, Limeharbour, Isle of Dogs, London; From Dawn until Dusk, 2008, granite, Boscombe Pier, Bournemouth; Transition Point, 2013, granite and polished stainless steel, Leys School, Cambridge; Unity, 2013, granite and blue resin, King’s Cross, London; Glorious Beauty, 2014, a glacial boulder and a stainless steel cast, Kensington High Street; and The Space Between, 2015, granite, Forbury Place, Reading.

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. 1–2, 123, 237–39; D.A. Cross, Public Sculpture of Lancashire and Cumbria, Liverpool, 2017, pp. 192; Simon Hitchens website.

Terry Cavanagh November 2022

Albert Hemstock Hodge (1875–1917)

Sculptor born on Islay. He initially trained as an architect in Glasgow with William Leiper, afterwards entering Glasgow School of Art, where he won a gold medal, silver medal and four bronze medals, and where his skill in modelling architectural details encouraged him to become a sculptor. Hodge achieved recognition in 1901 with his plaster angels for the dome of James Miller’s Industrial Hall in the Kelvingrove International Exhibition. In this same year he moved to London and obtained much work as an architectural sculptor. His commissions include two figures, Thomas Chippendale and Josiah Wedgwood, 1905, for Aston Webb’s new Exhibition Road frontage for the V&A Museum, South Kensington; all the carving on Ernest George and Yeates’ Royal Exchange Buildings, London, 1907; the Maritime Prowess group, 1907, for Russell & Cooper’s Guildhall, Hull; decorative carving for Lanchester, Stewart & Rickards’ Deptford Town Hall, 1907; mythological groups and historical portrait statues on J.J. Burnet’s Clyde Navigation Trust Building, Glasgow, 1906–08; Mining and Navigation groups for Vincent Harris’s Glamorgan County Hall, Cardiff, 1910; the Monument to Robert Burns, Stirling, 1914; a statue of Queen Victoria for the frontage of the Glasgow Royal Infirmary, 1914; pedimental sculpture for the Parliament Buildings, Winnipeg, 1916–19; and colossal groups for Edwin Cooper’s Port of London Authority Building, Trinity Square, London, 1912–22 (completed by his assistant Charles Doman). Hodge exhibited at the RA 19 times between 1905 and 1917 and was elected as a member of the RBS in 1907. He worked in a decorative classical style, a dept to the Parthenon sculptures being particularly evident in his groups for Glamorgan County Hall.

Bibliography: Architect, 11 January 1918, p. 16; S. Beattie, The New Sculpture, New Haven and London, 1983; Builder: (i) 18 January 1918, p. 57; (ii) 8 February 1918, p. 93; T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of Kensington and Chelsea with Westminster South-West, Watford, 2023, p. 170; T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of South London, Liverpool, 2007, pp. 94, 143, 144, 146, 147, 148; A.S. Gray, Edwardian Architecture, London, 1985; R. McKenzie, Public Sculpture of Glasgow, Liverpool, 2002, pp. 7–8, 58–60, 111–12, 332–35, 385, 437–38, 439–40, 445, 465; Mapping Sculpture; P. Ward-Jackson, Public Sculpture of the City of London, Liverpool, 2003, pp. 408–10.

Terry Cavanagh November 2022

Rodney Holland (b. 1964)

Chainsaw sculptor. Born in Dumfriesshire, he trained as an agricultural engineer, and now runs Quantum Chainsaw Carving from his studio in Moniaive, near Dumfries, where he also conducts demonstrations and classes in the techniques of chainsaw sculpture. He works regularly in the USA, and was a founding director of the United Chainsaw Carvers Guild in 2001. Works in Scotland include the 4.5-metre-high Eagle carved in 2009 from a storm-damaged beech tree in the grounds of Stobo Castle, near Peebles, and Peter Pan, at the Garden Wise garden centre in Dumfries (2011).

Source: information provided by the sculptor.

Bibliography: R. McKenzie, Public Sculpture of Edinburgh (2 vols), Liverpool, 2018, vol. 1, p. 447.

Ray McKenzie 2018

Polly Hope

See Crosby, Theo, and Polly Hope

James Houghton (fl. c.1865–c.1904)

From 1865 to 1868, Houghton is listed in the Post Office London directories as a statuary working from addresses firstly in Albany Street and then Stanhope Street near Regent’s Park. In about 1869 he relocated to 212 Great Portland Street (later adding a second address, 10 Upper Charlton Street) advertising his business firstly as a marble, stone and granite works then, by 1879 – although still available for ‘all monumental work’ – giving priority to the manufacture of marble chimney pieces. His commissions include the architectural sculpture on Archer & Green’s 193 Fleet Street, 1883, and the pedestal for Princess Louise’s statue of Queen Victoria, 1893, Kensington Gardens.

Bibliography: T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of Kensington and Chelsea with Westminster South-West, Watford, 2023, pp. 365, 367; Post Office London directories, 1865–1904; P. Ward-Jackson, Public Sculpture of the City of London, Liverpool, 2003, p. 123.

Terry Cavanagh November 2022

Kenny Hunter (b. 1962)

Born in Edinburgh, he studied at Glasgow School of Art (1983–87), and has exhibited widely in the UK, France and Scandinavia, including the major shows, Hyperboreans, Glasgow (1992); Natural Selection, Yorkshire Sculpture Park (2006); and Kontrapunkt, House for an Art Lover, Glasgow (2014). His work is distinguished by its fusion of traditional monument-making techniques with subject matter drawn from contemporary popular culture, and its interrogation of the moral, political and aesthetic orthodoxies associated with both. Public work includes Four Children, Hamilton (1998), Citizen Firefighter, Glasgow (2001), Feedback Loop, Aberdeen (2003), Untitled (girl with a rucksack), Glasgow (2004), Monument to Sir Patrick Geddes, Royal Mile, Edinburgh (2011–12); the Leicestershire County Council Armed Services Memorial, Stand Easy, Loughborough (2012), and the cast-iron Elephant for Glasgow, Bellahouston Park, Glasgow (2015). He is currently Programme Director of Sculpture at Edinburgh College of Art, and his work is represented in the collections of Creative Scotland, the Scottish Parliament, the British School in Athens, the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, and Glasgow Gallery of Modern Art.

Bibliography: Kenny Hunter, Work: 1995-1998 (ex. cat.), Arnolfini, Bristol, 1998; R. McKenzie, Public Sculpture of Edinburgh (2 vols), Liverpool, 2018, vol. 1, pp. 180–82; R. McKenzie, Public Sculpture of Glasgow, Liverpool, 2002, pp. 111, 189–90, 380–81; D. White and E. Norman, Public Sculpture of Sheffield and South Yorkshire, Liverpool, 2015, pp. 15–17.

Ray McKenzie 2018

John Hutchison (1833–1910)

Sculptor. Born in Edinburgh, the son of a builder, he was apprenticed at the age of thirteen to a wood carver in a house on the High Street near the now demolished Netherbow. He later enrolled at the Trustees’ Academy, studying modelling and decoration, followed by classes in the Antique and Life School under Robert Scott Lauder. At the Academy he also participated in the celebrated sketching club associated with the painting students John McWhirter and William (later Sir William) Quiller Orchardson, both of whom were to remain his lifelong friends. In 1852 he carried out a major programme of decorative wood carving in the picture gallery of Hospitalfield House, Arbroath, but on his return to Edinburgh decided firmly to pursue a career in sculpture, making his debut at the Royal Scottish Academy (RSA) annual exhibition with an unidentified portrait medallion in 1856. In 1860 he travelled to Rome to continue his studies under Alfred Gatley, forming friendships with John Gibson, Laurence Macdonald and Hiram Powers, whose influence can be seen in numerous Roman subjects, including Marietta, a Roman Girl (1860), now in the National Gallery of Scotland, and A Roman Matron, which was shown at the International Exhibition in London in 1862. The bulk of his output was in subject pieces and portraiture, including a marble bust of Queen Victoria on which he is said to have retained a correction to the chin made by the monarch herself by pressing her thumb on the clay model. Among his public commissions are a bronze statue of the engineer James Carmichael outside the Albert Institute in Dundee (1876), a freestone monument to Robert the Bruce at Lochmaben, Dumfries and Galloway (1879) and a bronze statue of John Knox at the School of Divinity, New College, University of Edinburgh (1896). He was elected ARSA in 1862 and full RSA five years later, serving as the Academy’s librarian from 1877 and its treasurer from 1885 until his retirement in 1907. His death in 1910 was sudden and unexpected, and was thought to have been brought on by his sadness at the death of his old friend Orchardson earlier in the same year.

Bibliography: D.A. Cross, Public Sculpture of Lancashire and Cumbria, Liverpool, 2017, pp. xii–xiii; W.T. Johnston, Dictionary of Scottish Artists (c.2000), Scottish National Library, ref CD-ROM.585; C.B. de Laperriere (ed.), The Royal Scottish Academy Exhibitors 1829–1990: a dictionary of artists and their work in the annual exhibitions, Wiltshire, 1991, (4 vols), vol. 2, pp. 335–39; R. McKenzie, Public Sculpture of Edinburgh (2 vols), Liverpool, 2018, vol. 1, pp. 69, 293–301, 391–94, vol. 2, pp. 35, 138–41, 215, 265, 270–74, 345, 346, 347, 508, 509; Scotsman, 24 May 1910, p. 6 (obit.).

Ray McKenzie 2018

Thomas Bayliss Huxley-Jones (1908–1968)

Sculptor. Born in Grahamstown (S. Africa), he trained at Wolverhampton College of Art (1924–29) under Robert Emerson, and at the Royal College of Art (1929–-33) under Richard Garbe and Gilbert Ledward. He married the sculptor, Gwynneth Holl, and worked briefly as an assistant to Charles Wheeler before taking up a post as head of sculpture at Gray’s School of Art in Aberdeen (1934–48). He moved on to become head of sculpture, first at Middlesex Polytechnic and then at the South East Essex Technical College and School of Art. In 1963 and again in 1968, he was visiting artist in residence at Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, in the United States. Huxley-Jones received three important commissions for London statuary: the statue of David Livingstone for the Royal Geographical Society, Kensington Gore (1953), the Helios Fountain for the BBC TV Centre (1960), and the Joy of Life Fountain for Hyde Park (1963). He settled in Chelmsford, and did much work in Essex, including a figure of St Peter for Chelmsford Cathedral, a figure of Christ (1968) for St Martin’s Church, Basildon, and bronze doors for the Westminster Bank in Romford. In 1960, for the publisher Alec Tiranti, he wrote a book entitled Modelled Heads, which illustrates many of his own portrait works, alongside the work of contemporaries and a choice of historical examples. Huxley-Jones was a member of the Royal Society of British Sculptors.

Bibliography: D. Buckman, Artists in Britain since 1945 (2 vols: A–L, M–Z), Bristol (1998), 2nd edn. 2006; T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of Kensington and Chelsea with Westminster South-West, Watford, 2023, pp. 287–89, 333–37; Huxley-Jones Papers, held at the Essex County Record Office, Chelmsford; Weekly News, 13 December 1968 (obit.); P. Ward-Jackson, Public Sculpture of Historic Westminster. Volume 1, Liverpool, 2011, pp. 85–87.

Philip Ward-Jackson 2011