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.

Comments are provided by Facebook, please ensure you are signed in here to see them

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...

Read More

Fame

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

Read More

Poets’ Fountain - Chaucer, Shakespeare & Milton

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

Read More

Other Subjects

William Calder Marshall

William Calder Marshall

Sculptor. Born Edinburgh.

Person, Sculpture, Scotland

3 memorials
Jim Guy

Jim Guy

"Award-wining sculptor" but we are struggling to identify him. Could this be the same Jim Guy who was quoted in 2011 by the BBC as the Managing Director of the Zahra Modern Art Foundries, a short-l...

Person, Sculpture

1 memorial
Irena Sedlecka

Irena Sedlecka

Born Czechoslovakia. Married the sculptor Franta Belsky in 1996.

Person, Sculpture, Czechoslovakia

1 memorial
Sir William Reynolds-Stephens

Sir William Reynolds-Stephens

Sculptor.  Born in Detroit to British parents and educated in Europe.  He added the Reynolds to his surname in 1890.  Made the very unusual sculpture A Royal Game 1906-11. Died Tunbridge Wells.

Person, Sculpture, USA

1 memorial
Pavlos Angelos Kougioumtzis

Pavlos Angelos Kougioumtzis

Sculptor. Born in Drama, Macedonia, Greece. 2018: Versions of his statue of the ancient goddess Nike have been presented to every host city of the Olympic Games since 1996.

Person, Sculpture, Greece

1 memorial