Person    | Male  Born 19/5/1815  Died 30/8/1885

Thomas Thornycroft

Categories: Sculpture

Sculptor. born Cheshire. Came to London in 1835 where he was apprenticed to John Francis and worked alongside another of Francis's apprentices, his daughter Mary, whom he married on 29 February 1840. Four of their children became artists or sculptors, including Hamo and Teresa, a painter who had three children including Siegfried Sassoon. Thomas's eldest son, John Isaac became a naval architect. It was Mary's work which sustained the family financially. The only surviving public sculptures by Thomas himself in London of which we are aware are the Commerce group on the Albert Memorial and the Boudicca statue, but even that was actually a joint production by the Thornycroft family.

He was an amateur engineer and late in life assisted his son John to design steam launches (we wonder if that "assisted" should be in quotes). The Thornycroft marriage appears to have been happy, but one has to admire Mary: a Victorian wife who brought up six children, carried on a successful career as a sculptor, and taught her skills to the royal princesses including Princess Louise. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography recounts this significant story from their granddaughter: "Thomas Thornycroft had been known to cut the heads off Mary's clay models, ostensibly to position them better, but provoking exasperated cries of ‘Only tell me! Thorny, only tell me!’ from his wife as she tried to protect her works". Our hearts go out to her.

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This section lists the memorials created by the subject on this page:
Thomas Thornycroft

Creations i

Boadicea/Boudicca/Boudica

The horses look totally out of control to us; no wonder the two daughters loo...

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Fame - from Poets’ Fountain

The statue glistens with recent gilding. This was first done in 2002 in honou...

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Poets’ Fountain - Chaucer, Shakespeare & Milton

The seated figures represent the three Muses; the standing figures, the three...

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Other Subjects

Alfred Frank Hardiman

Alfred Frank Hardiman

Sculptor.  Born 17 Orde Hall Street. The statue of Lord Haig is his best known work.  Ornamental Passions tells us that Hardiman also produced four pieces of the sculpture on County Hall.  Died Sto...

Person, Sculpture

2 memorials
Omar Ramsden

Omar Ramsden

Silversmith.  Born Sheffield but spent some of his childhood in America.  Had studios in Chelsea and then Fulham, with a staff of up to 20.  He was a designer and businessman.  There's a suggestion...

Person, Craft / Design, Sculpture, USA

1 memorial
Cyril Mann

Cyril Mann

Painter and sculptor.  Born London but brought up in Nottingham.  Despite a scholarship (aged 12!) to study art at Nottingham Art School he left school and in 1927 went to Canada doing the sort of ...

Person, Art, Sculpture, Canada, France

1 memorial
John Bell

John Bell

Sculptor. Born Norfolk though his family home was in Suffolk. On the Albert Memorial the America group is his. Died at home at 15 Douro Place, Victoria Road, Kensington.

Person, Sculpture

2 memorials
Sir Antony Mark David Gormley, OBE, RA

Sir Antony Mark David Gormley, OBE, RA

Known professionally as Antony Gormley, he is a sculptor and is most famous for 'The Angel of the North' in Gateshead, Tyne and Wear. Almost all his work takes the human body as its subject, with h...

Person, Sculpture

1 memorial