Sculptor born at Torquay into a family of marble masons. From c.1890 he studied at the South London Technical School of Art under W.S. Frith and, 1893–98, at the Royal Academy Schools, where he became friends with the painter Gerald Moira (1867–1959), later collaborating with him on a number of decorative schemes using coloured plaster bas-reliefs, including for the interiors of the Trocadero Restaurant, Shaftsbury Avenue, and the Salle Bechstein (later Wigmore Hall), Wigmore Street, London. The two worked with the architect T.E. Collcutt on the P&O Company’s Pavilion at the 1900 Paris Exposition Universelle, Lynn Jenkins’ low-relief frieze panels winning a silver medal. They also worked on Collcutt’s Lloyd’s Registry of Shipping, Fenchurch Street, City of London, c.1900. Here Lynn Jenkins produced a relief for the lunette over the Council Chamber doorway and, for the vestibule, a 24.5m-long frieze in electrotyped copper, ivory and mother-of-pearl, with, at the head of the stairs, a bronze and marble group, The Spirit of Maritime Commerce. In 1904, he completed a 2.75m-high gilt bronze figure of Count Peter of Savoy to stand over the main carriage entrance of Collcutt’s Savoy Hotel, The Strand. In the following year, he carved two high-relief figures, St Dunstan and William Torel, for the cycle of great British artists, craftsmen and architects on Aston Webb’s new frontages for the Victoria and Albert Museum. In 1911, for Collcutt and Hemp, he carved monumental stone figures over the central entrance of Thames House, Queen Street Place, City of London. He was a member of the Chelsea Arts Club from 1897 (elected chairman in 1901); a member of the Art Workers’ Guild from 1900; and a founder member of the Royal Society of British Sculptors in 1905. He showed frequently at the Royal Academy from 1895 until his move to the USA in 1916, where he continued to work and exhibit until his death.
Bibliography: Architectural Review, vol. 1, November 1896–May 1897, pp. 99–106; S. Beattie, The New Sculpture, New Haven and London, 1983; Builder, 9 September 1927, p. 406; T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of Kensington and Chelsea with Westminster South-West, Watford, 2023, pp. 106, 116–17, 170; A.S. Gray, Edwardian Architecture, London, 1985; Mapping Sculpture; M.H. Spielmann, British Sculpture and Sculptors of To-day, London, 1901; The Times, 3 September 1927, p. 12; P. Ward-Jackson, Public Sculpture of the City of London, Liverpool, 2003, p. 307.
Terry Cavanagh November 2023
Laurence Koe, Frank Lynn Jenkins, sketch portrait from G.E. Moira and F. Lynn Jenkins, ‘The Art Movement. Novelty in Decoration at the Trocadero’, The Magazine of Art, vol. 20 (Nov 1896–Apr 1897), pp. 92–97. Internet Archive version of a copy in the University of Toronto Library, via the Victorian Web.
