Sculptor, born in Nottingham. He initially trained with his father, George Leighfield Doman, a monumental sculptor, while also, c.1897–c.1901, attending Nottingham School of Art. He won the 1st National Scholarship in sculpture in 1906, and entered the Royal College of Art. In 1908 he won two further scholarships, including the Royal College’s travelling scholarship. On leaving the Royal College, he taught sculpture at Putney School of Art. He exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1909 to 1944; a number of his exhibits were imaginary subject pieces, taking the form of garden sculptures or statuettes. In 1911 he became a member of the Royal Society of British Sculptors; in 1923, when the Society divided its membership into Associates and Fellows, he was elected an Associate, finally becoming a Fellow in 1938. Also in 1938, he became a member of the Art Workers’ Guild. Doman worked as an assistant to the architectural sculptor Albert Hemstock Hodge, and after the older sculptor’s death in 1919, executed work which Hodge had conceived for the architect Edwin Cooper’s Port of London Authority Building. This led on to further work for Cooper, mostly in the City of London. However, Doman’s most ambitious work as an architectural sculptor was the frieze representing Britannia with the Wealth of East and West, carried out in collaboration with T.J. Clapperton for the attic parapet of Liberty’s shop in Regent Street (1924), for the architects E.T. and E.S. Hall.
Bibliography: J. Johnson and A. Greutzner, A Dictionary of British Artists 1880–1940, Woodbridge, 1976; Mapping Sculpture; P. Ward-Jackson, Public Sculpture of the City of London, Liverpool, 2003, pp. 223, 301, 302, 408–10, 458–59, 465; P. Ward-Jackson, Public Sculpture of Historic Westminster. Volume 1, Liverpool, 2011, pp. 362–63, 444; G.M. Waters, Dictionary of British Artists Working 1900–1950, Eastbourne, 1975.
Philip Ward-Jackson, 2011; revised, Terry Cavanagh, November 2024
Charles Doman, from The Sphere, 17 November 1928 (public domain, via Wikipedia)
