Sculptor, born Patricia Fitch in Pool in Wharfedale, West Yorkshire. She enrolled at Leeds School of Art in 1946 and in 1950 gained entrance to the Royal College of Art. One of her fellow students was Joe Rowland (1924–1996), a ceramicist, whom she married in 1954, the year after they both graduated. Throughout the 1950s Rowland earned her living as a full-time teacher so her output was necessarily small. She made three appearances at the Royal Academy, in 1956, 1957 and 1959 with, respectively, a portrait head (Denise), a watercolour (The Back Garden) and a female torso in Portland stone. In 1960, she secured a commission from Wates Built Homes Ltd for a sculpture to stand outside Lowood House, part of a new development in Dulwich, south London. A two-figure group, modelled in white concrete with a Hopton Wood stone aggregate and entitled Mother and Child, it was unveiled in 1961 but had to be removed some years later after being irreparably damaged by a delivery truck. In 1965, she and her husband relocated to the south of France, moving into an old farmhouse in Oms, in the Pyrénées-Orientale. In 1967, Rowland was one of the founding members of the Métiers d’Art Sant Roch (an exhibiting society of artists and craftspeople) in Céret. She had solo exhibitions in France, Spain and Germany, with a retrospective at the Palais des Congrès in Perpignan in 2019. Her public sculptures in France include Les danseurs de sardanes, Banyuls-sur-Mer (1977), Baigneurs, Centre Sportif, Amélie-les-Bains (1978), L’Homme qui pense, Perpignan (1979), L’Homme Blotti, Céret (2009) and Trio, Town Hall, Oms (2010).
Bibliography: T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of South London, Liverpool, 2007, p. 387; A. Devailly, ‘A Oms, dans les Pyrénées-Orientales, disparition de la sculptrice britannique Pat Rowland à 96 ans’, Artistes de France – Occitanie (5 May 2024); Pat Rowland: Aux Sources de la Création (exhibition, 12 April–18 May, Palais de Congrès), Perpignan, 2019 (PDF).
Terry Cavanagh, November 2025