Details of Sculptor

Surname

Ritchie

Alternative Surname

First Name

Alexander Handyside

Initial of Surname

R

Year of Birth/Baptism

1804

Flourished

Year of Death

1870

Biographical Details

A Scottish sculptor, he specialised in portraiture and architectural sculpture. He was born on 15 April 1804 at Musselburgh, a fishing town near Edinburgh, the second son of James Ritchie and his wife Euphemia. His father was an ornamental plasterer and brickmaker and his mother was descended from Alexander Handyside. Ritchie was educated at the local parish school, where his talent for drawing and design soon became apparent. He continued his studies in Edinburgh, where he attended the School of Arts founded by Leonard Horner in 1821 as a college for working men, and Dr John Barclay’s Anatomy School. In 1823, under the sponsorship of Walter, 5th Duke of Buccleuch, Ritchie obtained a place in the Edinburgh studio of Samuel Joseph. He remained with Joseph for two years and then, after a visit to London, entered the Trustees School of Design in Edinburgh, returning to London to model from the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum during the vacation.
In June 1826 he visited the Continent, staying in Paris for a few weeks, then studying in Carrara for four months before travelling to Rome, where he entered the studio of Bertel Thorvaldsen. He remained there for several years and is said to have been a favourite pupil of Thorvaldsen, who awarded him a gold medal. After his return to Scotland in 1830 he worked from his home at Musselburgh for 12 years before establishing a studio at 92 Princes Street, Edinburgh, in 1842. He was assisted by his younger brother John Ritchie and employed an Italian assistant, as well as taking pupils, including John Rhind, Alexander Munro and George Anderson Lawson.
Ritchie built up a considerable practice as a portrait sculptor from 1830 onwards, executing more than 70 busts and securing several commissions for public statues, including those of Sir Walter Scott in Selkirk, Sir Robert Peel in Montrose and the physician and writer David Moir in Musselburgh (16, 25, 26). He was particularly successful as an architectural sculptor, working on prominent buildings in Edinburgh and Glasgow during the 1840s and 1850s. These included the Commercial Bank in George Street, Edinburgh, where he carved an elaborate allegorical pediment group to designs by James Wyatt (121). This was praised by the Art Union, whose critic was particularly impressed by three figures of children, which ‘would do credit to the chisel of any sculptor’. He suggested that Ritchie himself ‘must be a man of fine sympathies and of gentle nature, as well as high genius, who can represent the innocence of childhood so successfully’ (AU, 1846, 284). Ritchie was a regular exhibitor at the Royal Scottish Academy from 1831 and was elected an associate member in 1846. He showed work at the Royal Institution for the Encouragement of the Fine Arts in Scotland (1825-1827, 1830), the West of Scotland Academy (1831-1832) and the Royal Academy in London (1830-1868).
Beyond Scotland, Ritchie provided sculpture for the Houses of Parliament in London. In 1844 he sent a group of Sophronia and Olinda at the stake to the Westminster Hall Exhibition organised by the Royal Fine Art Commissioners to select artists to execute works for the new building (20). The Literary Gazette was sparing in its praise for the group, noting that ‘while some parts have had great care bestowed upon them, there are others, for instance the drapery at the foot, as slovenly as any we have ever witnessed’ (cited by Gunnis 1968, 323). In 1847 Ritchie was nonetheless commissioned to model figures of two signatories of the Magna Carta, Eustace de Vescy and William de Mowbray, for the Chamber of the House of Lords (34, 38). John Thomas employed him on decorative work for the same building in 1848 (122).
In 1854 Peter Denny, the Provost of Dumbarton, commissioned from Ritchie a colossal nude statue, which was to embody the passions of horror and despair (27). According to the Scotsman, this untraced work was the ‘first bona fide commission given in Scotland for a work in sculpture free from all local conventionality of treatment and dependent entirely on its power of exciting universal sympathy’ (11 Jan 1854, cited by Woodward 1977, vol 1, pt 2, 202). It was perhaps in connection with this work that Ritchie paid a second visit to Rome where he spent six months. On his return he moved his premises to Mound Place. There in the late 1850s he executed a series of statues of Scottish religious leaders and a group commemorating the martyred Covenanter Margaret Wilson and her sister Agnes for the Valley cemetery, Stirling (36, 41).
Ritchie retired from business in 1861 and the occasion was marked with a retrospective exhibition the following year at his studio, now at Coates Place. He moved back to the family home at Herkes Loan, Fisherrow, Musselburgh but retained his studio for several years and continued to exhibit at the Royal Scottish Academy. He died on 24 April 1870 and was buried in the churchyard of St Michael, Inveresk. He left all his property, which, apart from the money he was owed for a monument to James Morrison of Greenfield at Alloa, was valued at the meagre sum of £6 10s 6d, to his sister Euphemia who cared for him in the last years of his life. A contemporary later wrote that Ritchie’s ‘simple, guileless and kindly disposition’ made him a favourite with all who knew him and and suggested that ‘Only greater restraint and power of steady application was required to have enabled him to win a very high place among the sculptors of this country’ (J M Gray, cited by Wrinch 1969, 481).
EH
Literary References: Builder, 1870, 422; Gunnis 1968, 323; Wrinch 1969, 380-1; Woodward 1977, vol 1, pt 2, 200-7; ODNB (Woodward)
Archival References: IGI
Additional MS Sources: Ritchie/Wyatt
Wills: NAS SC70/4/127 and SC70/1/149, ESC general disposition and settlement and inventory
Portraits of the Sculptor: David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, 3 calotypes (including group portraits), 1843-8, NPG P6 (24), NPG P6(33), NPG P6(98); David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, calotype (group portrait), c1845, NPG x18781; David Octavius Hill, The Disruption (large group oil painting), 1843-65, Free Church Presbytery Hall, Edinburgh; David Octavius Hill, calotype, nd, R Sc A