Sculptor, painter and engraver, born in Wallasey, Cheshire. He began his training at Liverpool School of Art with the painter William Penn, c.1916, but was advised to study sculpture as well, which would mean that his teacher of modelling would in all likelihood have been Charles John Allen. Bradshaw’s winning of a national competition enabled him to complete his studies in London, at Leon Underwood’s Brook Green School of Drawing (opened 1921). In these years he also worked with Frank Brangwyn, firstly as a pupil (1920) and subsequently (1925) as an assistant. One of Bradshaw’s earliest surviving commissions was for Brompton Oratory, London, comprising two bas-reliefs depicting scenes from the life of St Philip Neri, installed in 1928. (He also painted some large ceremonial banners for the Oratory.) During the interwar period Bradshaw established a reputation for architectural sculpture, especially on civic buildings, such as the Guildhall at Cambridge (bronze doors and decorative plinths, 1935–37); Watford Town Hall (three carved brick reliefs, 1933–40); and Worthing Assembly Hall (Three Tragic Masks over the main entrance, incised murals for the buffet and plaques for the foyer, 1935). During the Second World War Bradshaw served as an official war artist for the Norwegian government. He had been an active member of the British Communist Party since the 1930s and in 1955 gained the commission for the Tomb of Karl Marx in Highgate cemetery, his most widely known work. He was a member of the Art Workers’ Guild from 1952 (elected Master in 1958) and was a Fellow of the Royal Society of British Sculptors from 1968. In these post-wars, however, the number of architectural commissions dwindled. He had submitted an unsuccessful proposal in 1952 for a sculptural screen at the front of the Time-Life building in New Bond Street and although he won two commissions at the end of the decade, for the ‘Hampshire Hog’ weathervane (c.1959) for County Hall, Winchester, and four incised relief panels in concrete (1960) for Denton Lounge, Marine Parade, Worthing, these were fairly minor. Consequently, he turned to painting and to producing portrait busts, his subjects including prominent political and cultural figures, such as the Communist and trade unionist, Harry Pollitt; the philosopher and novelist, Colin Wilson; and the poet, Hugh MacDiarmid.
Archive source: Henry Moore Institute, Leeds: Bradshaw Archive
Victoria and Albert Museum collections: (i) Drawing for ‘Bronze doors Guildhall, Cambridge’, (ii) Drawings for three Watford Town Hall reliefs: ‘Accountancy, Records, Measurements, Official Stamps’, ‘Hygiene, Civic Centres, Parks and Open Places’, ‘Musical Instruments Representing Entertainment’, (iii) Drawing for ‘scheme for the buffet in the Municipal Assembly Hall, Worthing’.
Bibliography: P. Atterbury, ‘Laurence Bradshaw (1899–1978)’, in P. Curtis (ed.), Sculpture in 20th Century Britain, Volume II: A Guide to Sculptors in the Leeds Collections, Leeds (Henry Moore Institute), 2003, p. 27; C. Lindey, ‘The man who moulded Marx’, Morning Star, 4 April 2007; Mapping Sculpture; J. Seddon, ‘From Worthing to Highgate and back: the career of Laurence Henderson Bradshaw (1899–1978’, Sculpture Journal, Vol 19.2 (2010), pp. 234–40; J. Seddon et al, Public Sculpture of Sussex, Liverpool, 2014, pp. 175, 177; The Times, 18 March 1978, p. 16 (obituary).
Jill Seddon, Peter Seddon and Anthony McIntosh, 2014; revised, Terry Cavanagh, February 2025