Edinburgh sculptor, mostly of portrait busts, but also of ideal works, such as The Murmur of the Shell (marble, present whereabouts not known), and statuettes, including one of Gladstone that was ‘much admired’. Of the small number of monuments he produced, the finest is the marble recumbent effigy of Archibald Campbell, 1st Marquis of Argyll, in St Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh (1895). For the Monument to Sir Walter Scott, Edinburgh, he executed the figure of Dougal Gregor, a character from Rob Roy. He acted as an advisor to the philanthropist Andrew Carnegie in the purchase of paintings for his collection.
Bibliography: W.T. Johnston, Dictionary of Scottish Artists (c.2000), Scottish National Library, ref CD-ROM.585; R. McKenzie, Public Sculpture of Edinburgh (2 vols), Liverpool, 2018, vol. 2, pp. 347, 351, 509; The Scotsman, 18 December 1903, p. 4e.
Ray McKenzie 2018
