Sculptor and medallist. According to the critic Marion Spielmann, McGill studied at the National Art Training School, South Kensington, and ‘had experience in Paris prior to entering the [Royal] Academy schools … with skill already formed’. He started to exhibit at the Royal Academy (RA) annual exhibitions in 1889, and won a gold medal for his group lone Removing the Body of St Sebastian after the Martyrdom, which was shown in 1894. Spielmann detected in his relief of Hero and Leander (RA 1892) the influence of Harry Bates. McGill continued to exhibit portrait busts and subject pieces at the RA up to 1924. Until 1918 various addresses in London are given for him in the catalogues, but from 1919 his address was given as ‘Visalia’, Glenwood Road, West Moors, Dorset. McGill’s most prestigious commission was for the statue of the politician and temperance campaigner, Sir Wilfrid Lawson, unveiled in the Victoria Embankment Gardens, London, in 1909. He was a member of the Society (Royal Society from 1911) of British Sculptors, 1904–14, and an honorary member, 1923–47. He was an associate member of the International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers, 1907–10.
Bibliography: Mapping Sculpture; M.H. Spielmann, British Sculpture and Sculptors of To-day, London, 1901, pp. 147–48; P. Ward-Jackson, Public Sculpture of Historic Westminster. Volume 1, Liverpool, 2011, pp. xxxi, 347–49.
Philip Ward-Jackson, 2011; revised, Terry Cavanagh, November 2024