Sculptor, archaeologist and restorer of medieval monuments. He was born in Marylebone, London, on 26 June 1811, the son of John Richardson, a draper, and his wife, Hannah. Algernon Graves lists him as Edward M. Richardson, but this is an error: as can be seen from his baptismal record, Richardson had no middle name. Nothing is known of his education until 1832 when, according to Rupert Gunnis, he was admitted to the Royal Academy (RA) Schools on the recommendation of Francis Chantrey. By this date Richardson had already exhibited twice in the annual RA exhibitions: in 1829 the restoration of a head ‘from one of the Elgin marbles in the British Museum’ and in 1830, an intaglio comprising a study from the antique. He was to be a regular contributor to the RA until 1866, his work consisting principally of imaginative subjects in the early years, giving way to portrait busts and church monuments in later years. He also exhibited at the British Institution (1840, 1846 and 1862) and with the Society of British Artists in Suffolk Street. He first came to prominence with his restoration of the series of thirteenth-century effigies in Temple Church, City of London (1839–42). According to his obituary in the Magazine of Biography, Richardson was accused by the Society of Antiquaries of over-restoring the effigies. Although Gunnis describes the contemporary reaction as ‘a chorus of disapproval’, this hardly seems to be the case, with The Times (24 October 1842) and the Illustrated London News (5 November 1842) asserting that the figures had ‘been restored in the most perfect manner’, and the Architectural and Antiquarian Year Book (1844) declaring that their restoration ‘commands admiration’. Indeed, Richardson received a succession of major restoration commissions throughout the 1840s, hardly to be expected if the quality of his work had been met with a chorus of disapproval. Two examples of his restoration work in Chichester Cathedral, however, highlight the contrast between 21st-century standards of restoration and those in play in the 1840s. The first, 1843–44, is of the tomb generally believed to have been erected for Richard FitzAlan, Earl of Arundel (d.1376), and his second wife, Eleanor (d.1372). Significant parts of the two figures were missing and had to be recreated by Richardson, on what evidence it is not clear, including the motif of the Earl clasping his wife’s hand (which famously inspired Philip Larkin’s 1964 poem, ‘An Arundel Tomb’). The second, of 1846, is a tomb believed at the time to be that of Bishop Richard de Wyche (d.1253; canonized in 1262). Here, as well as re-carving existing surfaces, Richardson added around the tomb chest seven statuettes relating to St Richard’s life. Even though the tomb was later found to be that of another bishop altogether, Robert Stratford (d.1362), Richardson’s statuettes remain in place. In the 1853 he was commissioned to make plaster casts of famous sepulchral effigies for the Crystal Palace at Sydenham. While engaged on restoring and taking casts from other’s works, Richardson was busy with his own sculptures. He submitted statues in 1844 and 1845 to the Westminster Hall competition but without success. Indeed, his first entry, a statue of the medieval poet John Gower, elicited such vituperative comment it is remarkable that he did not stick to restoration work. The Art Union dismissed it as ‘a mere strait furrowed mass of plaster’ and, worse, the Literary Gazette labelled it ‘an abortion’. But, apparently undeterred, he carried on, submitting not only the Gower (or a version of it), now cast in bronze, to the Great Exhibition of 1851, but also two other bronzes and a Youthful Athlete in plaster (for the latter, see the engraving in the Illustrated Exhibitor, p. 518). Richardson secured numerous commissions for church monuments, both in Britain and in India, many of them military, including the 16th Queen’s Lancers and the 31st (Huntingdonshire) Regiment, both 1848, both Canterbury Cathedral; Major-General Sir Robert Dick, 1850, Chennai (Madras) Cathedral, India; the North Lincoln Regiment, 1851, Lincoln Cathedral; the 51st (King’s Own) Infantry Regiment, 1855, York Minster; the 2nd Battalion Military Train, 1859, Bristol Cathedral; the Cornwall Regiment Light Infantry, c.1861, Exeter Cathedral; and the 101st Regiment, 1863, Winchester Cathedral. His non-military church monuments include three gothic-inspired recumbent effigies: John Abel Smith, 1848, Chichester Cathedral; the Earl of Powis, 1852, St Mary, Welshpool, Montgomery; and the 2nd Marquis of Ormonde, 1855, Kilkenny Cathedral. He was also responsible for the Blue Coat Boy, 1854, set into a niche over the entrance to the Blue Coat School in Chester.
Richardson was a member of the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society from its inception (1855), lecturing and publishing several papers in the Archaeological Journal. He also published detailed accounts of his various restorations. Proud of his work in this field, in the 1861 census he described himself as ‘Sculptor and Author’. He was twice married, his marriage to Eliza Austin in 1838 producing four sons and one daughter. Following Eliza’s death, in 1859 he married Jane Rawson. His eldest son, Edward Mallcott Richardson (b. 1839), became a landscape painter, his name the possible source of Grave’s confusion. Richardson seems to have suffered from a nervous condition in his later years and died on 17 May 1869, aged 57, of erysipelas.
Ancestry website sources: London … Church of England Baptisms, Marriages and Burials … Westminster. St Marylebone: Marylebone Road, 1811–1812; England censuses 1841, 1851, 1861; Warwickshire, Church of England Marriages and Banns … Leamington Priors, All Saints, 1825–1849; London … Church of England Marriages and Banns … Camden, St Stephen the Martyr … 1856–1875; England and Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations) … 1869.
Bibliography: Architectural and Antiquarian Year Book, 1844, pp. 284–87; Art Union: (i) 1 July 1844, p. 217, (ii) 1 August 1845, p. 258; The Builder: (i) 24 June 1848, p. 310, (ii) 3 September 1853, p. 560, (iii) 3 September 1859, p. 590; W. Burge, The Temple Church. An account of its restoration and repairs, London, 1843, pp. 66, 67 C. Dodgson (rev. J. Edwards), ‘Richardson, Edward (1812–1869)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online edn.), (2004), 2023; The Gentleman’s Magazine: (i) March 1847, pp. 258–59, (ii) June 1850, pp. 619–20, (iii) July 1852, pp. 66–69; A. Graves, The British Institution. A complete dictionary of contributors and their work from the foundation of the Institution, 1875, p. 453; A. Graves, The Royal Academy of Arts. A complete dictionary of contributors and their work from its foundation in 1769 to 1904, (1905–06), Vol VI (Oakes–Rymsdyk), 1906, pp. 284–85; Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations, 1851. Official Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue. Vol. II, London, 1851, p. 829; R. Gunnis, Dictionary of British Sculptors 1660–1851, London, [1968], pp. 320–21; R. Gunnis, Dictionary of British Sculptors 1660–1851, London, [1968], pp. 320–21; The Illustrated Exhibitor … comprising sketches … of the principal objects in the Great Exhibition of the Industry of all Nations, 1851 (published in 30 issues, 7 June – 27 December), London, p. 518 (drawing of Richardson’s Youthful Athlete); Mapping Sculpture; E. Morris and E. Roberts, Public Sculpture of Cheshire and Merseyside, Liverpool, 2012, p. 90; Register, and Magazine of Biography, vol. 1 (1869), pp. 486–87; E. Richardson, The Monumental Effigies of the Temple Church, with an account of their restoration, in the year 1842, London, 1843; I. Roscoe et al, A Biographical Dictionary of Sculptors in Britain 1660–1851, New Haven and London, 2009, pp. 1034–36; M.A. Steggles and R. Barnes, British Sculpture in India, Kirstead, Norfolk, 2011, pp. 174, 178–79, 189; E. Williamson et al, Sussex: West (The Buildings of England), New Haven and London, 2019, p. 222, 223.
Terry Cavanagh, December 2025
