Sculptor and painter, born in Kirkcaldy, Scotland, the son of Edward Batten, a mechanical engineer. He studied painting at Beckenham and Chelsea Art Schools, but began experimenting with stone carving in 1927, learning to carve granite in masons’ yards in Cornwall. He exhibited his first sculpture in 1936. His five exhibits at the Royal Academy, 1939–1963, were all heads or busts in stone. In 1939 he collaborated with Eric Gill, but usually worked independently, and without assistants, in his studio at Christian’s River, Dallington, East Sussex. Following the outbreak of the Second World War he was called up and served in the Household Cavalry, where, because of his skills as a mechanic, he was tasked with the training of armoured vehicle drivers. He was elected an Associate of the Royal Society of British Sculptors in 1950, a Fellow in 1952, and served as President, 1956–61; he resigned his membership on his retirement from active work as a sculptor in 1967. He was an enthusiastic advocate of ‘Sculpture by the Direct Method’, publishing Stone Sculpture by Direct Carving in 1957, revising the text as Direct Carving in Stone in 1966. His public sculptures include a relief of the Madonna and Child, St Saviour and St Peter’s Church Hall, Eastbourne, East Sussex (1957) and The Diogenist, Hopton Wood stone, Golders Hill Park, northwest London (1959). At the Paris Salon in 1977, the Société des Artistes Français awarded him the Gold Medal for Sculpture for his sculpture, Mountaineer. He died on 4 January 1993.
His wife, Elsie (née Thorneloe), whom he had married in 1933, was murdered during the course of a robbery in the curio shop in which she worked in Cecil Court, off Charing Cross Road, London, on 3 March 1961.
Bibliography: D. Buckman, Artists in Britain since 1945 (2 vols: A–L, M–Z), Bristol, 2006; Mapping Sculpture; J. Seddon et al, Public Sculpture of Sussex, Liverpool, 2014, pp. 56–57; J. Skelton, ‘Obituary: Mark Batten’, The Independent (online edn), 20 January 1993; The Times: (i) 4 March 1961, p. 6, (ii) 13 May 1961, p. 6; Who Was Who (online edn), 2007.
Terry Cavanagh, March 2025