Sir Thomas BrockKCB RA (1 March 1847 – 22 August 1922) was an English sculptor and medallist, notable for the creation of several large public sculptures and monuments in Britain and abroad in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.[1][2] His most famous work is the Victoria Memorial in front of Buckingham Palace, London.[2] Other commissions included the redesign of the effigy of Queen Victoria on British coinage, the massive bronze equestrian statue of Edward, the Black Prince, in City Square, Leeds and the completion of the statue of Prince Albert on the Albert Memorial.[3][4]
Biography
Brock was born on 1 March 1847 in Worcester.[2] He was the only son of a painter and decorator and attended the Government School of Design in Worcester, after which he undertook an apprenticeship in modelling at the Worcester Royal Porcelain Works.[5] In 1866 he became a pupil of the sculptor John Henry Foley and also enrolled in the Royal Academy Schools, where he won a gold medal for sculpture in 1869.[5][6] He met and befriended Frederic, Lord Leighton, whose emphasis on realism and naturalism in sculpture led Brock to become part of the New Sculpture movement and to develop his talent for sympathetic and realistic portraiture.[4]After Foley's sudden death in 1874, Brock finished several of his commissions, including the monument to Daniel O'Connell in Dublin and a large bronze equestrian statue of Lord Canning for Kolkata.[5][7][8] It was his completion of Foley's statue of Prince Albert for the Albert Memorial which first brought Brock to prominence and secured his position as an establishment sculptor.[7][6][9] He also assisted in the casting of Lord Leighton's greatly influential 1877 sculpture An Athlete Wrestling with a Python.[10]
Brock was elected an associate of the Royal Academy in 1883 and became a full member in 1891.[6] He was a founding member, and the first president, of the Society of British Sculptors.[11]
Thomas Brock in his studio, 1889
Brock's group The Moment of Peril (now in the garden of Leighton House) was followed by The Genius of Poetry, at the Carlsberg Brewery in Copenhagen. A plaster model for Eve was shown at the Royal Academy in 1898; a marble version (1900) is in the collection of the Tate and Brock also cast some smaller bronze replicas and other imaginative works that mark his development.[12] His portrait works include busts, such as those of Lord Leighton and Queen Victoria, statues, such as Sir Richard Owen and Henry Philpott, bishop of Worcester, and sepulchral monuments such as that of Lord Leighton in St Paul's Cathedral.[1][6][11]
Brock made statues of Victoria to celebrate her golden and diamond jubilees and also designed the depiction of her "veiled" or "widowed" head, used on all gold, silver and bronze coinage between 1893 and 1901.[11]
In 1901 Brock won the commission to make a colossal equestrian statue of Edward the Black Prince for Leeds City Square. The same year, he was given perhaps his most significant commission, the vast multi-figure Imperial Memorial to Queen Victoria, to be erected in front of Buckingham Palace.[9] The unveiling of this memorial took place on 16 May 1911,[13] and according to legend King George V was so moved by the excellence of the memorial that he called for a sword and knighted Brock on the spot.[9] In any event, it was on the same day that the Lord Chamberlain’s Office notified The London Gazette that the king had ordered that Brock be appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath.[14]
From 1914 to 1919 Brock returned to the post of president of the Society of British Sculptors.[11]
Brock married in 1869 and had eight children. He died in London on 22 August 1922 and is buried at Mayfield, East Sussex.[4]
Public monuments
1875–1889
1890–1899
1900–1909
1910–1919
1920 and later
Other works
Equestrian bronze A Moment of Peril, 1880, now in the collection of Tate Britain.[83]
Marble statue on a pedestal of Sorabjee Shapurjee Bengallee, 1898, south-east corner of the Oval, Fort, Mumbai[8]
The Victoria and Albert Museum in London holds several bronze castings made from the original 1901 clay models of the Victoria Memorial plus later, small-scale, versions of the supporting groups that differ from those on the completed monument.[84]
Marble bust for India of Darasha Ruttonjee Chichgur, 1903, current location unknown[8]
Bronze statue of Queen Victoria, erected 1904 at Cawnpore and now in the Uttar Pradesh State Museum, Lucknow. Thought to be a cast of the design Brock used for his statues of the Queen at Agra, Hove, Brisbane and Carlise.[8]
Statue of Queen Victoria, Agra, 1905, removed to storage in Mathura after the 1947 independence of India. The statue was originally on a pedestal with bronze figures of Truth and Justice at the base and located on a marble platform in an ornamental lake. The supporting figures are now missing.[85][8]
Marble bust of Sir Cowasjee Jehangir, 1915, Jehangir Public Hall, India[8]
^ a b cIan Chilvers (2004). The Oxford Dictionary of Art. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-860476-9.
^Mark Stocker (3 January 2008). "Brock, Sir Thomas". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/32080. Retrieved 5 June 2020. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
^ a b c d e f"Thomas Brock - shaping the 'New Sculpture' movement". Westminster Abbey. Retrieved 11 August 2022.
^ a b cUniversity of Glasgow History of Art / HATII (2011). "Sir Thomas Brock RA, KCB, PRBS, HRSA". Mapping the Practice and Profession of Sculpture in Britain & Ireland 1851–1951. Retrieved 28 September 2020.
^ a b c d e f gSusan Beattie (1983). The New Sculpture. Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art / Yale University Press. ISBN 0300033591.
^ a b"Sir Thomas Brock RA (1847–1922)". Royal Academy. Retrieved 28 September 2020.
^ a b c d e f g h i j k l mMary Ann Steggles & Richard Barnes (2011). British Sculpture in India: New Views & Old Memories. Frontier Publishing. ISBN 9781872914411.
^ a b cMartina Droth, Jason Edwards & Michael Hatt (2014). Sculpture Victorious: Art in the Age of Invention, 1837-1901. Yale Center for British Art, Yale University Press. ISBN 9780300208030.
^ a b c d e f g hJohn Blackwood (1989). London's Immortels. The Complete Outdoor Commemorative Statues. Savoy Press. ISBN 0951429604.
^ a b c d e f g h i j"Thomas Brock PPRSS (1847–1922)". Royal Society of Sculptors. Retrieved 8 November 2021.
^"Sir Thomas Brock: Eve, 1900". Tate. Retrieved 3 April 2015.
^"Victoria Memorial Is Unveiled by King George". Dundee Evening Telegraph. No. 10699. British Newspaper Archive. 16 May 1911. Retrieved 19 January 2015.
^The Buildings of England: Worcestershire, Nikolaus Pevsner, 1968 p208
^"Sir Rowland Hill (1795-1879)". Thomas Brock. Victorianweb.org. 20 August 2009. Retrieved 7 January 2018.
^"Henry Wadsworth Longfellow". Westminster Abbey. Retrieved 29 July 2022.
^"Art Collection Online: William Menelaus". Amgueddfa Cymru. Retrieved 9 March 2023.
^"Statue of Colin Minton Campbell (1827-1885)". Public Monument and Sculpture Association. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 1 October 2020.
^"Sir Henry Tate". Tate Britain. Retrieved 11 June 2023.
^Public sculpture of Warwickshire, Coventry and Solihull by George Thomas Noszlopy, pp. 28–29.
^George T. Noszlopy (1998). Public Sculpture of Britain volume 2: Public Sculpture of Birmingham including Sutton Coldfield. Liverpool University Press. ISBN 0-85323-682-8.
^"Queen Victoria Monument, Carlisle". History and Heritage. Retrieved 3 April 2015.
^Historic Environment Scotland. "Burns Statue Square, South African War Memorial (Category B Listed Building) (LB21516)". Retrieved 31 October 2020.
^"War Memorials Register: Royal Scots Fusiliers - Burma, Sudan, Tirah Campaign, 1st Boer War and 2nd Boer War". Imperial War Museum. Retrieved 31 October 2020.
^Wencer, David (6 December 2014). "Historicist: Here Comes the Equestrian Statue". Torontoist. Retrieved 4 April 2015.
^"Royalty and Australian Society Chapter 2: King Edward VII". National Archives of Australia. Retrieved 3 April 2015.
^"Queen Victoria". The Victorian Web. Retrieved 20 January 2021.
^"HM The Queen Empress Victoria (1819–1901)". Museums of India, National Portal & Digital Repository. Retrieved 20 January 2021.
^Harris, Oliver D. (2018). "A crusading 'captain in khaki': Sir Thomas Brock's monument to Charles Grant Seely at Gatcombe (Isle of Wight)". Church Monuments. 33: 97–120.
^"War Memorials Register: Captain CG Seely". Imperial War Museum. Retrieved 1 October 2020.
^"A Moment of Peril, 1880, Sir Thomas Brock". Tate. Retrieved 6 December 2020.
^Diane Bilbey with Marjorie Trusted (2002). British Sculpture 1470 to 2000 A Concise Catalogue of the Collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum. V&A Publications. ISBN 1851773959.
^"Statue of Queen Victoria | Yale Center For British Art". interactive.britishart.yale.edu. Retrieved 21 April 2018.
^"Plarr's Lives of the Fellows: Lee, Henry (1817 - 1898)". www.rcseng.ac.uk. Retrieved 31 May 2021.
Further reading
Brock, Frederick (2012). Sankey, John (ed.). Thomas Brock: forgotten sculptor of the Victoria Memorial. Bloomington, Ind.: AuthorHouse. ISBN 9781467883344.
Byron, Arthur (1981). London Statues: a guide to London's outdoor statues and sculpture. London: Constable. ISBN 9780094634305.
Getsy, David J. (2004). Body Doubles: Sculpture in Britain, 1877–1905. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 9780300105124.
Harrold, Pauline; Rota, Una; Stainton, Thomas, eds. (1968). British Sculpture, 1850–1914: a loan exhibition of sculpture and medals sponsored by the Victorian Society, 30th September–30th October 1968. London: Fine Art Society.
Sankey, John Anthony (2002). Thomas Brock and the Critics – An Examination of Brock's Place in the New Sculpture Movement (phd). PhD Thesis: University of Leeds.
Stocker, Mark. "Brock, Sir Thomas (1847–1922)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/32080. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Thomas Brock.
72 artworks by or after Thomas Brock at the Art UK site
