About Sir William Hamo Thornycroft

Sir William Hamo Thornycroft

Wirgman, Theodore Blake; Sir William Hamo Thornycroft (1850-1925), RA; Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museums

Sir William Hamo Thornycroft (9 March 1850 – 18 December 1925) was born in London into the Thornycroft family of sculptors. Both his parents, Thomas and Mary, and his grandfather, John, were distinguished sculptors. He trained in his parent’s studio and in 1869 entered the Royal Academy Schools, where he benefited from the teaching of Lord Leighton. In 1872 he travelled via France to Italy. In Paris he was impressed by the work of such nineteenth-century sculptors as Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, François Rude and Paul Dubois, and in Italy he particularly admired the work of the early Renaissance masters Ghiberti, Donatello and Verrocchio. In 1875 he was awarded the Royal Academy gold medal for his sculpture ‘A Warrior Bearing a Wounded Youth from the Field of Battle’.

He was responsible for some of London’s best-known statues, including the statue of Oliver Cromwell outside the Palace of Westminster. He was a keen student of classical sculpture and 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. He was a leading figure in the establishment of the New Sculpture movement, which provided a transition between the neoclassical styles of the 19th century and later modernist developments.