Sculptor, principally of portrait busts, born in Worcester. In the 1871 census, still living in Worcester, he was described as an ‘apprentice sculptor’. He subsequently relocated to London, where, as a student of the Royal Academy Schools he was awarded a silver medal in the ‘model of a statue or group’ category in 1875. Remaining henceforth in London, he showed at the Royal Academy, 1878–93, at the Grosvenor Gallery, 1879–90, and also at the New Gallery and the Royal Society of British Artists. His 1893 bronze bust of Mary of Teck, Duchess of York (Queen Mary from 1910) is in the Royal Collection (RCIN 54057). Dating from the same year is his bronze statuette group of Mary with Mabell Ogilvy, Countess of Airlie (Lot 87 at Sotheby’s, London, 14 July 2021). In 1895, following the death of Father Joseph Hirst, President of Ratcliffe College (a Roman Catholic school in Leicestershire), Tyler, as an Old Ratcliffian, was commissioned to produce a memorial bust of him in marble. His also is the undated wall monument to George John Sackville-West, Earl De La Warr (d.1869) and his wife, Elizabeth (d.1870), erected by their children in St Michael and All Angels, Withyham, East Sussex.
Bibliography: T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of Leicestershire and Rutland, Liverpool, 2000, p. 268; 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 VIII (Toft–Zwecker), 1906, pp. 50–51; Mapping Sculpture.
Terry Cavanagh, March 2025