Sculptor. Born Faith Weamy Beatrice Ashe in Richmond, southwest London, she studied at Guildford and Chelsea Schools of Art, and exhibited sculpture at the Royal Academy from the age of 19. Married to an army officer in 1952, she only began to devote herself full-time to sculpture in her forties. Her first commission, which she received after her husband had placed her name in the Yellow Pages as a sculptor, was for a relief plaque illustrating the History of Communications, for the printing firm of Staples. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of British Sculptors in 1983, and in the following year was awarded the society’s silver medal for Fifteen Mysteries of the Rosary, installed in Our Lady Queen of Peace Church, Richmond. She was also a member of the Society of Portrait sculptors. Several of her commissions were for military commemorations. These include a two-figure group entitled The Soldiers, unveiled by Queen Elizabeth II at Catterick Garrison, North Yorkshire, in 1975 (now at Blandford Camp, Dorset); a relief of the Battle for the Falklands for the War Memorial (1983) in Port Stanley, Falkland Islands (the memorial’s figure of Britannia is by fellow Guildford alumnus, David Norris); and statues of Air Chief Marshal Hugh Dowding, 1987–88, and Sir Arthur Harris, 1991–92, either side of St Clement Danes Church, in The Strand, and General Wladyslaw Sikorski in Portland Place, London, 1997–2000. Winter also executed statues of historical figures: one of John Ray (1986), commissioned by Braintree Borough Council, Essex, and another of Archbishop George Abbot, which was unveiled in Guildford, Surrey, by Lord Runcie on 3 April 1993. Her last public commission (2007) was for Coventry, and represents the inventor of the jet engine, Frank Whittle, looking up into the sky, under the Whittle Arch (constructed in 2003). Children figure prominently in her work, and a Boy with a Carp is the subject of the Pearce Memorial, which was erected at Thame, Oxfordshire, in 1992. Based in a studio in Puttenham, Surrey, Winter’s usual working practice was to build her figures up directly in plaster.
Bibliography: D. Buckman, Artists in Britain since 1945 (2 vols: A–L, M–Z), Bristol, 2006; M. Quinlan, British War Memorials, Hertford, 2005, pp. 274, 356; M. Quinlan, Sculptors and Architects of Remembrance, Sandy, Bedfordshire, 2007, p. 122; Royal Society of Sculptors: ‘Faith Winter FRBS (1927–2017’; Sunday Telegraph, 14 June 1992 (an interview by Martyn Harris); The Times, 24 March 2017, p. 56 (obituary); P. Ward-Jackson, Public Sculpture of Historic Westminster. Volume 1, Liverpool, 2011, pp. 233–34, 264, 265–69.
Philip Ward-Jackson, 2011; revised, Terry Cavanagh, January 2025