Hamo Thornycroft

Hamo Thornycroft
William Hamo Thornycroft, 1884 by Theodore Blake Wirgman
Born	(1850-03-09)9 March 1850 London, England
Died	18 December 1925(1925-12-18) (aged 75) Oxford, England
Occupation	Artist
Known for	Sculpture

"Stepping Stones", Kibble Palace, Glasgow

Sir William Hamo Thornycroft RA (9 March 1850 – 18 December 1925) was an English sculptor, responsible for some of London’s best-known statues. He was a keen student of classical sculpture and became one of the youngest members of the Royal Academy.

He was the leading figure in the movement known as the New Sculpture, which provided a transition between the neoclassical styles of the 19th century and its later fin-de-siècle and modernist departures.

Biography

Hamo Thornycroft belonged to the Thornycroft family of sculptors. His father, Thomas, mother Mary, and grandfather John Francis were all distinguished sculptors. He was born in London. His brother, 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. Hamo's early training was with his parents and he developed a passionate and precocious attachment to Classical sculpture. He subsequently studied at the Royal Academy of Arts, where his primary influence was the painter-sculptor Frederic Leighton. Hamo won the Gold Medal of the Royal Academy in 1876, with the statue Warrior Bearing a Wounded Youth.

He was the leading figure in the movement known as the New Sculpture.^[1] His close personal friend, the critic Edmund Gosse, coined the term "The New Sculpture" in 1894 and formulated its early principles from his relationship 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. These included Lot's Wife (1878), Artemis and her Hound (1880 plaster, 1882 marble), 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 laborer in 19th-century sculpture.

In 1884 he 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.^[2] 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.^[3]

Thornycroft was one of the youngest artists to be elected to the Royal Academy, in 1882, the same year the bronze cast of Teucer was purchased for the British nation under the auspices of the Chantrey Bequest. After 1884, Thornycroft's reputation was secure and he received commissions for a number of major monuments, most notably the innovative General Gordon. Thornycroft continued to be a central member of the sculptural establishment and the Royal Academy into the 20th century. He was knighted in 1917. He became increasingly resistant to new developments in sculpture, although his work of the early 1880s helped to catalyze 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,^[4] his studio designed by lifelong friend John Belcher, c. 1892.^[5][6]

Bibliography

• Beattie, Susan. The New Sculpture. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983.
• Friedman, Terry, ed. The Alliance of Sculpture and Architecture. Leeds: Henry Moore Institute, 1993.
• Getsy, David. Body Doubles: Sculpture in Britain, 1877–1905. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004.
• Gosse, Edmund. "Our Living Artists: Hamo Thornycroft, A.R.A." Magazine of Art, 1881, pp. 328–32.
• Manning, Elfrida. Marble and Bronze: The Art and Life of Hamo Thornycroft. London: Trefoil Books, 1982.
• Read, Benedict. Victorian Sculpture. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982.
• White, Adam. Hamo Thornycroft and the Martyr General. Leeds: Henry Moore Institute, 1991.

Writings

• "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.

Public statues

• Alfred the Great - Winchester
• William Ewart Gladstone in robes of Lord Rector of Glasgow University - Glasgow
• Oliver Cromwell - outside the Palace of Westminster
• General Gordon - Victoria Embankment
• John Bright - Rochdale
• Sir Daniel Dixon - Belfast City Hall
• William Lord Armstrong - Newcastle-on-Tyne
• Cecil Rhodes - Kimberley, South Africa^[7]
• A Sower - Kew Gardens
• Stepping Stones, Kibble Palace, Glasgow Botanic Gardens

Gallery

• 
  Lot's Wife by Hamo Thornycroft, Victoria & Albert Museum, 1878.^[8] Previously located in Leighton House.^[9]
• 
  Hamo Thornycroft, by Maull and Fox, c.1880^[10]
• 
  Thornycroft in his studio, 1883^[11]
• 
  A Sower, in Kew Gardens, 1886^[12]
• 
  Caricature by Spy for Vanity Fair magazine, 1892^[13]
• 
  Statue of Oliver Cromwell (Lord Protector) outside the Palace of Westminster, London, 1899
• 
  Thornycroft's statue of King Alfred the Great in Winchester, 1901^[14]
• 
  Alfred Lord Tennyson by Thornycroft, Trinity College Chapel, Cambridge, 1909^[15]
• 
  Blue plaque, 2a Melbury Road, London

Architectural

The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) Council commissioned Thornycroft to produce a detailed sculpted frieze^[16] for their headquarters at Chartered Accountants Hall for a cost of £3,000.

Thornycroft’s frieze, carved between 1889-1893, celebrates all the areas of human activity which have benefited from the services of accountants. A series of figures represent Arts, Sciences, Crafts, Education, Commerce, Manufacture, Agriculture, Mining, Railways, Shipping, India, the Colonies, and Building^[17]. 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.^[18]

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Hamo Thornycroft.

Wikisource has the text of a 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article about Hamo Thornycroft.

• Thornycroft works in the Tate Collection, London
• The Mower in the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool
• Biography on Bob Speel's Site
• 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