Thomas Mewburn Crook (1869–1949)

Sculptor born into a Roman Catholic family on 4 December 1869 at Tonge Moor, Bolton, Lancashire. He was the middle of the five children of James Crook, a cotton waste maker, and his wife Dinah (née Hamilton). His earliest art education, after completing his secondary schooling at the Xaverian College, Chorlton-on-Medlock, took the form of evening classes at Bolton Art School. He followed this with a full-time course at Manchester School of Art, graduating in 1890 with an art master’s certificate, which enabled him to enter the National Art Training School (from 1896 the Royal College of Art) at South Kensington, where his modelling master was Édouard Lantéri. During his five years at the school, he also travelled to Europe, and in his final year, a testament to his skills, was appointed by Lantéri assistant modelling master. In 1896 Crook returned to Lancashire and secured the post of modelling master and artistic anatomy lecturer at Manchester School of Art. In 1899, he and John Shields, the art school’s painting master, set up a shared studio in the garden of a house they rented together at 79 Clarendon Road, South Manchester. In 1901, Crook completed what was probably his earliest commission, a series of relief decorations for the council chamber of Manchester’s new Municipal Technical School. In 1904 he exhibited for the first time at the Royal Academy (RA). The work, listed in the catalogue as ‘Evening prayer – statue’, was presumably the plaster model (still in the possession of the sculptor’s family) for ‘Prayer, kneeling figure – marble’, which Crook showed at the 1923 RA and which in 2019 the family donated Our Lady of Grace and St Edward in Chiswick, the church in which Crook had regularly worshipped throughout his London years. Crook continued to exhibit at the RA until 1943, contributing 32 works in all, mostly religious and ideal subjects, with some portrait busts and heads and one portrait statue. In 1904, the parish priest of St Mary’s Roman Catholic Church in Standishgate, Wigan – already familiar with Crook’s work – commissioned him to provide the first of several sculptures for the church: a set of coloured plaster relief figures of prophets and saints for the sanctuary screens. This was followed, in 1908, by two panels forming an Annunciation scene, again in plaster, to flank the high altar; in 1911, by a statue of the Virgin with side panels of the Visitation and her Coronation, all in Seravezza marble, for the Lady Chapel; and in 1913, by an alabaster pulpit and a painted Stations of the Cross. In 1918, a parishioner donated to the church, as a war memorial to the parish dead, Crook’s Vision of Chateauneuf (a marble group of St Anthony of Padua with the Christ Child), the model of which Crook exhibited in the following year’s RA. Finally, another marble, St Thérèse of Lisieux (exhibited at the 1935 RA) was installed at the western end of the church as a memorial to two parishioners. Following the death of his father in 1905, Crook decided to relocate to London, taking his widowed mother and two unmarried younger sisters with him and setting up what was to be his studio for the rest of his life, at 10 Gainsborough Road, Chiswick. In 1908, he was made a member of the Society (Royal Society from 1911) of British Sculptors (RBS), and at the Society’s division of its membership into Associates and Fellows in 1923, he was elected a Fellow. An active RBS member, he was a member of the council, 1919–24, 1929–30, 1936–39 and 1944, honorary treasurer, 1937–44, and honorary secretary, 1940–45. It was through the RBS that he was offered what was probably his most prestigious commission, the marble statue of Sir Thomas Picton, one of a series of 11 statues of Welsh historical figures, each executed by an RBS sculptor, the whole ensemble unveiled in Cardiff City Hall on 27 October 1916. Crook was also a member of the Art Workers’ Guild, 1914–30. Considered too old for active service in the First World War, Crook worked as a Red Cross volunteer, his anatomical knowledge put to use in the provision of artificial limbs. In addition to his war memorial inside St Mary’s at Standishgate, he also produced one in the form of a plaster Pietà, which was erected in St Katharine’s, Rotherhithe, and lost either when the church suffered bomb damage during the Second World War or when it was subsequently demolished (a photograph of the group was published in R.B.S. Modern British Sculpture). Crook also produced a number of Calvary-type memorials for churchyards, at All Saints, Streetly, Sutton Coldfield; St John the Baptist, Felixstowe, Suffolk; St Lawrence, Caterham, Surrey; and St Saviour’s, Raynes Park, London. His bronze figure of Britannia, part of the London and Lancashire Insurance Company war memorial (1921), now stands in the Garden of Remembrance at the National Memorial Arboretum, Alrewas, Staffordshire. In 1924 Crook’s mother died and his sisters returned to Lancashire. In 1929, he married Winifred Saunders (1899–1980), whom he had employed some years previously as a studio assistant. His final public commission, for A.R. Goldthorp’s new library building at New Malden, southwest London (1939–41), comprised, for the exterior, a set of nine roundels with relief decorations in artificial stone representing the nine divisions of the Dewey library classification system, and for the entrance hall, a satinwood relief of Caxton and his printing press. Crook died on 18 January 1949 after some years of illness, and was survived by his wife and five children. In 2005 Leeds Art Gallery purchased a collection of his maquettes and preparatory sketches from his family (see photographs on the Art UK website) and in 2009 his grandson launched a website containing detailed information about the sculptor’s life, plus a gallery of photographs of his work.

Bibliography: D. Buckman, Artists in Britain since 1945 (2 vols: A–L, M–Z), Bristol, 2006; City of Cardiff, Illustrated Catalogue of Welsh Historical Sculpture presented to the City of Cardiff by the Rt Hon Lord Rhondda of Llanwern, M.A., on the 27th October 1916, pp. 64–69; Thomas Mewburn Crook, Sculptor 1869–1949 (website dedicated to the sculptor); F. Lloyd et al, Public Sculpture of Outer South and West London, Liverpool, 2011, pp. xix, 163–64; Mapping Sculpture; R.B.S. Modern British Sculpture, (Country Life Ltd), [1939], pl. 20 (Pietà), pl. 21 (Mysteries); Taking Stock. Catholic Churches of England and Wales: Wigan – St Mary;  Wikipedia: ‘T. Mewburn Crook’.

Terry Cavanagh, March 2026