Sculptor. Born in Edinburgh, he was apprenticed at an early age to the marble cutter John Marshall, but the patronage of Gilbert Innes of Stow, Depute Governor of the Royal Bank of Scotland, allowed him to study at the Royal Academy Schools in London, which he entered in 1818. During his time there he was employed as assistant to the sculptor Edward Hodges Baily. Later in 1818 Campbell travelled to Rome, where, under the influence of Antonio Canova and Bertel Thorvaldsen, he became one of the most accomplished British sculptors working in the international neoclassical style. In 1830 he returned to London, setting up a studio there. Perhaps the finest example of his Canovesque manner is the seated figure of Pauline Borghese at Chatsworth, Derbyshire (1824–40). In tomb sculpture, his most ambitious monument is that to the Duchess of Buccleuch at Warkton, Northamptonshire (c.1830), while the best known of his public statues is that of Lord George Bentinck in Cavendish Square, London (1851). Among his private portrait commissions are the statue of Arthur, the son of Alexander Fitzgerald Kinnaird, in the guise of Ascanius (1822), and many busts.
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. 121–25, 150, 394, vol. 2, pp. 144, 200, 234, 420–28; H.E. Smailes, ‘Campbell, Thomas (1791–1858)’, ODNB, (2004), 2009; P. Ward-Jackson, Public Sculpture of Historic Westminster, 2011, Liverpool, pp. 24–25.
Ray McKenzie 2018
