Details of Sculptor

Surname

Lawlor

Alternative Surname

First Name

John

Initial of Surname

L

Year of Birth/Baptism

1822

Flourished

Year of Death

1901

Biographical Details

Lawlor was an Irish sculptor who spent most of his working life in London, where he specialised in poetic subjects and portrait busts. He was born in Dublin in 1822 and received his early training at the Royal Dublin Society schools, studying sculpture under John Smyth. One of his early works, Cupid pressing grapes into the glass of Time, was purchased by the Royal Irish Art Union and awarded as a prize to the Countess of Ranfurly in 1843 (80). The following year he exhibited for the first time at the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA), showing a group entitled Boy and dog (81) and in 1845 he moved to London, where he found employment modelling statues for the new Palace of Westminster, under the direction of John Thomas. Two years later he joined the Royal Academy schools on Thomas’s recommendation.
Lawlor exhibited at the RA for the first time in 1848 (1) and he continued to show ideal works and portrait busts at the Academy until 1879, when he became involved in a dispute with the committee. He was also a frequent exhibitor at the RHA, becoming an associate member in 1861, and he showed at the British Institution (42-44, 84). His most successful work was perhaps A bather, a nude female figure which was awarded a prize medal when it was shown at the Great Exhibition of 1851 (5). Henry Weekes considered the statue ‘not surpassed by any in the exhibition for the modelling of female flesh’ and he recognised Lawlor as ‘a rising sculptor’ (Weekes 1851, cited by Murphy 1999, 72). The statue was displayed at the Dublin Exhibition of 1853, the Paris Exhibition of 1855 and the London International Exhibition of 1862. Prince Albert commissioned a version in marble as Queen Victoria’s birthday present in 1855.
Royal approval helped Lawlor to secure a major public commission: in 1864 he was invited to sculpt a group representing Engineering for the Albert Memorial in Kensington Gardens, London (9). The committee found much to censure in the work from the outset: Doyne Bell described the first model as ‘a signal failure’ (Royal Archives Ad H2/973, cited by Bayley 1981, 88), while Sir Charles Eastlake commented that it hardly seemed to be the work of a practised artist (Royal Archives Ad H2/944, cited by Brooks 2000, 177). The second model was little better and Lawlor sought to excuse his poor performance by professing ‘a natural inaptitude for minute modelling’ (Royal Archives Ad H2/1080, cited by Bayley 1981, 89). There were problems also with the large-scale marble: in March 1870, when it was nearing completion, it was judged ‘most unsatisfactory, bad in design and coarse in execution’ and damaged as a result of careless workmanship (W Newton, Report, Royal Archives Ad H12, cited by Bayley 1981, 91). It was nonetheless completed and in position by March 1871. The group combines the ideal and the realistic, presenting an emblematic figure of Engineering presiding over three labourers and various items of industrial machinery. Lawlor’s convincing depiction of a contemporary working man, a navvy, shovel in hand, dressed in a fur hat, loose necktie and tied trousers, was unusual in sculpture of the period.
In 1881 Lawlor provided a public statue for Limerick in his native Ireland (12). Patrick Sarsfield, the General who had attempted to defended the city against the army of William of Orange, was vigorously interpreted in flamboyant 17th-century costume. It has been described as ‘one of the most attractive [statues] of the period’ in Ireland (Hill 1995, 113). Five years later Lawlor went to America, though he soon returned to England. Although he had retired from exhibiting he continued to work for some years, executing a bust of Denny Lane in 1889 (74) and statue of Dr Delaney for Cork in 1890 (14). He died in 1901 aged 79. His nephew, Michael Lawlor, was his pupil and exhibited sculpture at the RA and RHA between 1877 and 1913.
Lawlor never married, but lived with his mother and other family members at 15 Hawley Road West, Camden Town, London (1881 Census). Walter Strickland later described him as ‘well-known and popular in artistic and literary society in London; his tall, handsome figure, his fund of witty anecdotes and his fine baritone voice making him a welcome guest and a favourite with all who knew him’. His easy-going nature may in part explain his failure to make a significant contribution as a sculptor. Strickland noted that he was irregular in his profession, ‘working only when he felt inclined or when necessity compelled him; and thus was unable to make provision for his old age.’ (Strickland II, 1913, 9)
EH
Literary References: Strickland II, 1913, 8-10; Gunnis 1968, 235-6; Bayley 1981, 55, 74, 87-91; Read 1982, 19, 100, 349; Hill 1998, 111-3; Brooks 2000, passim
Additional Manuscript Sources: Layard Papers, 1866, Add 38993