Sculptor born on Islay. He initially trained as an architect in Glasgow with William Leiper, afterwards entering Glasgow School of Art, where he won a gold medal, silver medal and four bronze medals, and where his skill in modelling architectural details encouraged him to become a sculptor. Hodge achieved recognition in 1901 with his plaster angels for the dome of James Miller’s Industrial Hall in the Kelvingrove International Exhibition. In this same year he moved to London and obtained much work as an architectural sculptor. His commissions include two figures, Thomas Chippendale and Josiah Wedgwood, 1905, for Aston Webb’s new Exhibition Road frontage for the V&A Museum, South Kensington; all the carving on Ernest George and Yeates’ Royal Exchange Buildings, London, 1907; the Maritime Prowess group, 1907, for Russell & Cooper’s Guildhall, Hull; decorative carving for Lanchester, Stewart & Rickards’ Deptford Town Hall, 1907; mythological groups and historical portrait statues on J.J. Burnet’s Clyde Navigation Trust Building, Glasgow, 1906–08; Mining and Navigation groups for Vincent Harris’s Glamorgan County Hall, Cardiff, 1910; the Monument to Robert Burns, Stirling, 1914; a statue of Queen Victoria for the frontage of the Glasgow Royal Infirmary, 1914; pedimental sculpture for the Parliament Buildings, Winnipeg, 1916–19; and colossal groups for Edwin Cooper’s Port of London Authority Building, Trinity Square, London, 1912–22 (completed by his assistant Charles Doman). Hodge exhibited at the RA 19 times between 1905 and 1917 and was elected as a member of the RBS in 1907. He worked in a decorative classical style, a dept to the Parthenon sculptures being particularly evident in his groups for Glamorgan County Hall.
Bibliography: Architect, 11 January 1918, p. 16; S. Beattie, The New Sculpture, New Haven and London, 1983; Builder: (i) 18 January 1918, p. 57; (ii) 8 February 1918, p. 93; T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of Kensington and Chelsea with Westminster South-West, Watford, 2023, p. 170; T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of South London, Liverpool, 2007, pp. 94, 143, 144, 146, 147, 148; A.S. Gray, Edwardian Architecture, London, 1985; R. McKenzie, Public Sculpture of Glasgow, Liverpool, 2002, pp. 7–8, 58–60, 111–12, 332–35, 385, 437–38, 439–40, 445, 465; Mapping Sculpture; P. Ward-Jackson, Public Sculpture of the City of London, Liverpool, 2003, pp. 408–10.
Terry Cavanagh November 2022