Hamo Thornycroft

"Stepping Stones", Kibble Palace, Glasgow

Hamo Thornycroft was born in London into the Thornycroft family of sculptors. Both of his parents, Thomas and Mary, were distinguished sculptors. As a young child, Hamo was sent to live with an uncle on a farm in Cheshire until, aged nine, he began studying at the Modern Free Grammar School in Macclesfield before, in 1863, returning to London as a pupil at the University College School.[3] He subsequently, from 1869, studied at the Royal Academy, where his primary influence was the painter-sculptor Frederic Leighton. While a student, Thornycroft assisted his father, Thomas, on the monumental statue of Boadicea and Her Daughters beside Westminster Bridge in London.[3] At the Royal Academy Schools, Hamo Thornycroft won two medals and obtained his first paid commission for a work, a bust of a Dr. Sharpey.[3] In 1871, Thornycroft visited Italy and Paris and assisted his father in creating a large fountain, destroyed in World War II, for Park Lane in London, modelling several figures of poets in marble and bronze.[3] During the first half of the 1870s he exhibited works on a regular basis at the Royal Academy, showing Fame, the Sharpey bust, a bust of Mrs Mordaunt and a model for an equestrian statue of Lord Mayo.[3] In 1876 Thornycroft won the Gold Medal of the Royal Academy, with the statue Warrior Bearing a Wounded Youth.[4]

In 1894 the critic Edmund Gosse, coined the term "The New Sculpture" and formulated its early principles from his friendship with Thornycroft. Thornycroft created a series of statues in the ideal genre in the late 1870s and early 1880s that sought to reanimate the format of the classical statue.[5] These included Lot's Wife (1878) and Artemis and her Hound (1880 plaster, 1882 marble).[3] In 1880 he was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy,[4] and produced the Homeric bowman Teucer (1881 plaster, 1882 bronze), and the Mower (1884 plaster, 1894 bronze), arguably the first life-size freestanding statue of a contemporary labourer in 19th-century sculpture.[6] A companion piece to the Mower, the Sower was exhibited in 1886 at the Royal Academy.[3]

After 1884, Thornycroft's reputation was secure and he received commissions for a number of major monuments, most notably the innovative General Gordon in Trafalgar Square. He produced other significant statues including an effigy of The Bishop of Carlisle (1895; Carlisle Cathedral),[7] Oliver Cromwell (Westminster), Dean Colet (a bronze group, early Italianate in feeling, outside St Paul's School, Hammersmith), King Alfred (Winchester), the Gladstone Monument (in the Strand, London) and Dr Mandell Creighton, Bishop of London (bronze, erected in St Paul's Cathedral). Other significant memorials were built in several cities of the then British Empire.[4][8]

Thornycroft continued to be a central member of the sculptural establishment and the Royal Academy into the 20th century. He was awarded the medal of honour at the 1900 Paris Exhibition,[4] and was knighted in 1917.[8] He became increasingly resistant to new developments in sculpture, although his work of the early 1880s helped to catalyse sculpture in the United Kingdom towards those new directions. In sum, he provided an important transition between the neoclassical and academic styles of the 19th century and its fin-de-siècle and modernist departures.

A blue plaque commemorates Thornycroft at 2b Melbury Road, Kensington,[9] his studio designed by his lifelong friend the architect John Belcher, c. 1892.[10][11]

In addition to his parents, Thornycroft's grandfather John Francis was also a distinguished sculptor. His brother, Sir John Isaac Thornycroft, became a successful naval engineer; their sister, Theresa, was the mother of the poet Siegfried Sassoon; Theresa and sisters Alyce and Helen Thornycroft were artists.

In 1884, Hamo married Agatha Cox, who was fourteen years his junior. At a dinner in 1889, Agatha was introduced to Thomas Hardy, who later described her as "the most beautiful woman in England" and admitted that she was one of the models for the title character in his novel Tess of the D'Urbervilles.[12] Agatha and her husband were interested in the concept of "artistic dress", and a dress worn by her (presumed to be her wedding dress) is held in the costume collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum, donated by their daughter, Mary Elfrida Thornycroft, who was also his biographer.[3][13]

Blue plaque, 2a Melbury Road, London

• "Lecture to the Sculpture Students of the Royal Academy of Art, 1885" reprinted in the Journal of the Walpole Society, vol. 69 (2007): 211–26.

The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) Council commissioned Thornycroft to produce a detailed sculpted frieze for their headquarters at Chartered Accountants Hall for a cost of £3,000.[14]

Thornycroft's frieze, carved between 1889 and 1893, includes a series of figures representing Arts, Sciences, Crafts, Education, Commerce, Manufacture, Agriculture, Mining, Railways, Shipping, India, the Colonies, and Building.[15] The figure of the architect is based on the Hall's architect, John Belcher and the sculptor on Thornycroft himself. The figure of the solicitor is H. Markby of Markby, Stewart & Co., who acted for ICAEW in its early years.[16]

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  Hamo Thornycroft, by Maull and Fox, c. 1880[43]
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  The bronze statue of Homeric bowman Teucer (1882)[4]
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  Lot's Wife by Hamo Thornycroft, Victoria & Albert Museum, 1878.[4] Previously located in Leighton House.[44]
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  Caricature by Spy for Vanity Fair magazine, 1892[45]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Hamo Thornycroft.

• 91 artworks by or after Hamo Thornycroft at the Art UK site
• Papers of the Thornycroft Family, in the Archive of Sculptors Papers at the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds
• Thornycroft works in the Tate Collection, London
• The Victorian Web, featuring links to images of works
• "Archival material relating to Hamo Thornycroft". UK National Archives.
• Portraits of Hamo Thornycroft at the National Portrait Gallery, London