Sculptor born on 22 August 1848 in Holborn, London, one of the sons of Edward Mullins, a solicitor and notary. After King Edward VI Grammar School, Louth, Lincolnshire, and Marlborough College, Wiltshire, he attended Lambeth School of Art and then, on the recommendation of John Birnie Philip in whose studio he had been working, in 1867 he entered the Royal Academy Schools. From c.1872 to 1874, he was in Munich studying under Professor Michael Wagmüller (and sharing a studio with Edward Onslow Ford). In 1872 he was awarded a silver medal at Munich and a bronze at Vienna for his group, Sympathy, and in 1873 he sent from an address in Munich (3 Unter Garten Strasse) his first contributions to the annual Royal Academy exhibitions, a portrait bust and a statuette. He was a regular exhibitor until 1906, the year before his death, his works comprising a mixture of imaginary subjects and portraits. Other exhibitions included the Grosvenor Gallery, the New Gallery, the Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts, and the autumn exhibitions at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, and Manchester Art Gallery. In 1884, he married Alice Pelton (the couple were to have one daughter and three sons). Also in 1884, Mullins was a founder member of the Art Workers’ Guild (resigning in 1885, rejoining in 1890 and serving on the committee, 1891–93). In 1889 he published A Primer of Sculpture and, from 1896 to 1905, was teacher of modelling at the Central School and Arts and Crafts. In 1905 he accepted an invitation to join the newly founded Society (later to be Royal Society) of British Sculptors. He had, by this time, however, been suffering from poor health for some years and died on 9 January 1907 at Walberswick in Suffolk. He was a successful portraitist, his busts including Walter William Ouless RA (1877), Dr Charles Murchison (executed in marble for St Thomas’ Hospital, exh. RA 1881); the Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon (1884); and Field Marshall Sir Henry Evelyn Wood (exh. RA 1896). He also executed statuettes of W.E. Gladstone, Sir Rowland Hill (exh. RA 1879), Val Prinsep ARA (exh. RA 1880) and the cricketer W.G. Grace (exh. RA 1887). His public statues include Major General Lousada Barrow for the Senate House, Lucknow, India (marble, 1882; now State Museum, Lucknow); Henry VII for Scott’s Building, King’s College, Cambridge (stone, 1883); William Barnes for Dorchester, Dorset (bronze, unveiled 4 February 1889); and Queen Victoria for Port Elizabeth, South Africa (Sicilian marble, 1897–1903). Despite the relatively large number of ideal statues and groups he exhibited, Mullins had strong views on the superiority of sculpture conceived as an integral part of an architectural whole, stating, in his paper to the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1900: ‘We may note the tendency of sculpture, when separated from architecture, in the popular form it takes at exhibitions, to develop into a species of bric-a-brac and objets de vertu … Too often the work, when done, is only suitable to become part of a rich man’s collection of treasures, that only the few therefore can possess, rather than fitted to belong to the nation as a whole, as it could do if it were executed for public buildings.’ (As transcribed in Beattie, p. 46.) His architectural commissions include the name shield and supporting putti for E.W. Godwin’s remodelling of the Fine Art Society building, New Bond Street (1881); the pedimental group (‘The School of Athens: the Age of Pericles’) for James Hibbert’s Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston, Lancashire (1885–87); and five relief panels for Charles Henman junior’s Braithwaite Hall, Croydon Municipal Buildings, south London (c.1896). His also is the horse in Portland stone surmounting the monument to the circus owner, John Frederick Ginnett in Woodvale Cemetery, Brighton, East Sussex (1892). Of his ideal works, Glasgow has three, two in the collections of Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum: Morn, wak’d by the Circling Hours (marble, exh. Grosvenor Gallery 1884) and Isaac and Esau (model exh. RA 1884, marble exh. RA 1904), and one in the Botanic Gardens: Cain (model exh. New Gallery 1896; marble purchased from Glasgow International Exhibition 1901).
Ancestry website: (i) Church of England Births and Baptisms … City of London. St Andrew Holborn … 1841–1849; (ii) 1871 Census for … London. St John the Evangelist. St John Westminster. 29; (iii) Church of England Marriages and Banns … Shirley [Surrey], St John the Evangelist. 1849 Mar–1932 Jun; (iv) 1901 Census … London. Hampstead. District 36; (v) England and Wales, National Probate Calendar … 1907.
Bibliography: S. Beattie, The New Sculpture, New Haven and London, 1983; D.A. Cross, Public Sculpture of Lancashire and Cumbria, Liverpool, 2017, pp. xiii, xiv–xv, 99–102; S.E. Fryer (rev. E. Hardy), ‘Mullins, Edwin Roscoe (1848–1907), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online edn), 2004; F. Lloyd et al, Public Sculpture of Outer South and West London, Liverpool, 2011, pp. xviii, 20–21; R. McKenzie, Public Sculpture of Glasgow, Liverpool, 2002, p. 18; Mapping Sculpture; J. Seddon et al, Public Sculpture of Sussex, Liverpool, 2014, pp. 27–28; The Times, 14 January 1907, p. 6 (obituary).
Terry Cavanagh, June 2025
