Hamo Thornycroft

Hamo Thornycroft belonged to the Thornycroft family of sculptors. Both of his parents, Thomas and Mary, were distinguished sculptors. He was born in London. 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. While still a student, he assisted his father in creating an important fountain in Park Lane, London, modelling several important figures in marble and bronze. He won the Gold Medal of the Royal Academy in 1876, with the statue Warrior Bearing a Wounded Youth.[1]

During his studies, Hamo began to return from pictorial realism to the classical Greek forms, and he was the leading figure in the movement known as the New Sculpture.[2] 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.[3] These included Lot's Wife (1878) and Artemis and her Hound (1880 plaster, 1882 marble). In 1880 he was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy,[1] 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 laborer in 19th-century sculpture.[4]

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 in Trafalgar Square. He produced other significant statues including The Bishop of Carlisle (1895; Carlisle Cathedral), 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) and Dr Mandell Creighton, Bishop of London (bronze, erected in St Paul's Cathedral). Other significant memorials were built around the British Empire.[1][5]

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,[1] and was knighted in 1917.[5] 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,[6] his studio designed by lifelong friend John Belcher, c. 1892.[7][8]

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.[9] 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.[10]

• 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.
• Getsy, David, "The Problem of Realism in Hamo Thornycroft's 1885 Royal Academy Lecture," The Walpole Society 69 (2007): 211-25.
• 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.

• "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.

• 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[11]
• A Sower - Kew Gardens
• Stepping Stones, Kibble Palace, Glasgow Botanic Gardens
• Haron Baronian, Knutsford, now forming part of the centennial war memorial [12]

• 
  Hamo Thornycroft, by Maull and Fox, c. 1880[13]
• 
  Thornycroft in his studio, 1883[14]
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  Statue of Dean John Colet[15]
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  The bronze statue of Homeric bowman Teucer (1882)[15]
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  A Sower, in Kew Gardens, 1886[16]
• 
  Statue of Oliver Cromwell (Lord Protector) outside the Palace of Westminster, London, 1899
• 
  Thornycroft's statue of King Alfred the Great in Winchester, 1901[17]
• 
  Alfred Lord Tennyson by Thornycroft, Trinity College Chapel, Cambridge, 1909[18]
• 
  Lot's Wife by Hamo Thornycroft, Victoria & Albert Museum, 1878.[1] Previously located in Leighton House.[19]
• 
  Caricature by Spy for Vanity Fair magazine, 1892[20]
• 
  Blue plaque, 2a Melbury Road, London

The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) Council commissioned Thornycroft to produce a detailed sculpted frieze[21] 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.[22] 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.[23]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Hamo Thornycroft.

• 91 paintings 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