Sculptor. He was educated at the Nonconformist Grammar School in Bishop Stortford (Herts), and studied art, first at the Cardiff School of Art, then at the South London Technical School of Art, under W.S. Frith, at the Slade School under Professor Fred Brown, and in Paris under Fernand Cormon and Denys Puech, and at the Académies Julian and Colarossi. In 1886 he exhibited a Mother of Evil at the Paris Salon. Hampton’s debut at the Royal Academy in 1889 consisted of four portrait busts, and thereafter, although he continued to exhibit subject pieces, his reputation was based principally on his portrait work and on commissions for commemorative monuments. His work in this latter field includes statues of Henry Austin Bruce, 1st Baron Aberdare, for Alexandra Gardens, Cathays Park, Cardiff (1895–98) and Spencer Compton Cavendish, 8th Duke of Devonshire, for Whitehall, London (1909–10); and memorials to Queen Victoria, for Christchurch Park, Ipswich, Suffolk (unveiled 1904; melted down for munitions manufacture during the Second World War); for Dalton Square, Lancaster (1904–07); and for Nagpur and Jubbulpore, India. Probably his most ambitious works were his two monuments to Charles, 1st Baron Hardinge of Penshurst, Viceroy of India (1910–16), erected in Hardinge Park, Patna, and at the Gateway of India in Bombay, one of which incorporated reliefs, the other allegorical statues and a lion. He also executed the architectural sculpture for John Belcher’s Ashton Memorial, Williamson Park, Lancaster (1904–09). After Hampton’s death, there was a debate in the letters column of the Times, as to whether he had been anything more than a highly professional purveyor of likenesses in portrait statues.
Bibliography: R. Cocke, Public Sculpture of Norfolk and Suffolk, Liverpool, 2013, pp. xiv, 279–80; D.A. Cross, Public Sculpture of Lancashire and Cumbria, Liverpool, 2017, pp. xiii, xiv, 66–69, 74–76; Mapping Sculpture; M.H. Spielmann, British Sculpture and Sculptors of To-day, London, 1901, p. 135; M.A. Steggles and R. Barnes, British Sculpture in India, Kirstead, 2011, pp. 49, 289, 292–93; The Times, 13 February 1929, p. 9 (obituary); P. Ward-Jackson, Public Sculpture of Historic Westminster. Volume 1, Liverpool, 2011, pp. 415–16, 450; Who Was Who (online edn), 2007.
Philip Ward-Jackson, 2011; revised, Terry Cavanagh, November 2024