Sculptor, born in Whaplode, Lincolnshire, the son of a carpenter foreman. In the 1871 census Gunthorp gave his occupation as a ‘sculptor’s apprentice’; by the beginning of the next decade he was training at South London Technical School of Art (1880–84), while working as a ‘stone carver mason’. In 1884, he began submitting works for exhibition: a total of 20 works to the Royal Academy, 1884–1909, comprising genre subjects, ideal subjects and portraits (one of his three 1909 exhibits, a relief entitled As You Like It, was illustrated in The Builder, 26 June 1909); two works – Young Mischief (1892) and Little Mischief (1899) – to the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool; and one work, a medallion entitled Memories, to the Franco-British Exhibition, White City, 1908. By 1901 at the latest Gunthorp was working as an architectural sculptor from an address in Camberwell New Road, south London, in partnership with Sylvester Horsman. The two men carved the sculptural decorations for two buildings designed by Maurice Bingham Adams for the philanthropist John Passmore Edwards: the Public Library and Baths, Wells Way, Camberwell (1901–03), and the Passmore Edwards Polytechnic (later Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts), Peckham Road (officially opened 1904). In 1906, Gunthorp was elected a member of the Society (later Royal Society) of British Sculptors, following his nomination by William Goscombe John and seconding by Frederick William Pomeroy. He died 20 September 1915.
Bibliography: T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of South London, Liverpool, 2007, pp. 228, 229, 232–33, 438; Mapping Sculpture; Post Office London Directory: County Suburbs, South, 1906; Sir I. Spielmann (comp.), Souvenir of the Fine Art Section, Franco-British Exhibition, 1908.
Terry Cavanagh, 2007; revised, July 2024