Sculptor born in Deptford, south-east London, one of the two sons of Herbert David, a master tailor and cutter, and his wife, Ada (née Lazaroff), a milliner. Educated at Glendale Grammar School, Wood Green, he left at 16, working initially in commercial art studios while taking evening and weekend classes in drawing, sculpture and painting at Hornsey School of Art. In 1956, aged 26, he relocated to Montreal to take up a graphic design job, subsequently moving to New York to work for the advertising agency, J. Walter Thompson, and returning to London in 1959 to work for Ogilvy, Benson & Mather, later freelancing on the Sunday Times Magazine. In 1964, he married the artist, Tamara Katz (divorced 1976). By 1965, he had decided to focus on sculpture, sending his first works to the Royal Academy summer exhibition – two heads entitled Sabine de Werth-Tuck and A Young Sculptor – from 12 Meadow Studios, High Street, Bushey, Hertfordshire (he continued to show intermittently at the RA until 1981). Also in the mid-1960s, he studied at the City and Guilds of London Art School, while teaching part-time, initially graphic design at Watford School of Art and then, 1975–90, sculpture at the Sir John Cass Faculty of Arts. On 9 June 1980, David’s bronze statue, Tribute to Dame Margot Fonteyn (‘Ondine’), was unveiled by the prima ballerina herself, at her birthplace, Reigate, in Surrey. Fonteyn sat for the head but several models – one of whom, Ann White, David married in 1982 – posed for the body. Bronze casts of the portrait head were later installed at the Royal Opera House (1993) and at Sadler’s Wells. The Fonteyn statue was the first in a series of sculptures David would produce related to dance, including two for the foyer of the Boston Ballet: Elaine Bauer as the ‘Dying Swan’ (1990) and Fernando Bauer as ‘Romeo’ (1991), and one for the Royal Ballet School, Covent Garden: Alessandra Ferri as ‘Juliet’ (2002). Also in the year of the Fonteyn statue’s unveiling, David was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of British Sculptors. His other public sculptures include: the Herald’s Place Sundial, Kempsford Road, Lambeth, south-east London (1984); Penny Farthing Sundial, Harlow Museum Walled Garden, formerly Mark Hall Cycle Museum (1984); Boy with Dolphin, inside Wallington Library, the only survivor of six bronze resin casts, the other five having been successively installed as the centrepiece of a fountain in the library garden and subsequently vandalised (1991); Nereid, Kingsway, Cardiff (1996); Mother and Child Fountain, Clare Hall, Cambridge (unveiled 1997); statue of Nick Duncombe, bronze, Harlequins Rugby Club, The Stoop, Twickenham (2004); and Mother and Child, bronze, Queen Mary’s Hospital, London (2006). Waterperry House and Gardens (owned by the School of Philosophy and Economic Science) in Waterperry, Oxfordshire, has several works by David: within the house, Philosophy, a relief panel; Laws of Manu, a set of 10 relief panels (2001); Krishna and Arjuna, a bronze statuette group (1989); and a bronze bust of Leon MacLaren; and in the gardens: Girl with Lamp of Wisdom, bronze figure (1998); and Meditation, a seated figure in marble resin (2003). David died of cancer, aged 87, in 2017.
Bibliography: D. Buckman, Artists in Britain since 1945 (2 vols: A–L, M–Z), Bristol, 2006; A. David, ‘Nathan David obituary’, The Guardian (online), 23 July 2017; Nathan David website; F. Lloyd et al, Public Sculpture of Outer South and West London, Liverpool, 2011, p. 314; D. Olsen, Sculpture in Harlow (The Harlow Art Trust), 2005, p. 38.
Terry Cavanagh, March 2026
Nathan David at his workshop in Barnes, south-west London, in 2004, with a cast of his Seated Figure, Meditation, in marble resin (photo © artist’s estate)
