Details of Sculptor

Surname

Leyland

Alternative Surname

First Name

Joseph Bentley, of Halifax

Initial of Surname

L

Year of Birth/Baptism

1811

Flourished

Year of Death

1851

Biographical Details

He was born in Halifax in the West Riding on 31 March, 1811, the second son of Roberts Leyland, a bookseller, publisher and naturalist, and his wife Susannah Bentley. He was educated at the school kept by his uncle and grandfather in Wade Street, Halifax, and in his later teens attended drawing classes at the Mechanics’ Institute. At the age of 16 he began modelling, and attracted the attention of a wealthy collector, Christopher Rawson of Hope Hall, Halifax, who allowed him to study his collection of ancient Greek marbles.
In 1831 Leyland exhibited a model, An Italian greyhound, at the Royal Manchester Institution, and the following year he showed a statue of Spartacus at the same venue (15, 17). These were followed by a colossal head of Satan, sent to the Royal Northern Society in Leeds (28). They works were well received and, encouraged by this success, Leyland moved to London in 1834. There he lodged with the Bradford engraver William Overend Geller and worked in a studio in Queen Street, off Oxford Street. Through his friend and patron, the portrait painter T H Illidge, he met Francis Chantrey and Richard Westmacott and he studied anatomy with the painter B R Haydon, who promoted his work.
Leyland enjoyed some success in London, receiving consistently favourable notices in the press, particularly for Warrior listening to a prior reading and English greyhounds (18, 16). His most famous work was the group, African bloodhounds (21), which Edwin Landseer considered ‘the noblest modern work of its kind’ (DNB). It was presented to Peel Park Museum, Salford, together with a Thracian falconer (22), after the sculptor's death, but both were subsequently destroyed.
In 1838 he returned to Halifax, where he largely abandoned the ambitious ideal subjects which had dominated his early career but had not proved profitable, and concentrated increasingly on church monuments and ornamental sculpture. His most important monumental commission was the recumbent effigy of Stephen Beckwith in York Minster (7). During this period Leyland formed a close friendship with the writer and artist Patrick Branwell Brontë and today he is chiefly remembered for the Brontë family connection.
Leyland’s later years were blighted by his heavy drinking, debts and ill-health. He had difficulties in completing commissions and frequently quarrelled with clients. Mary Leyland described him as, ‘self-opinionated, sarcastic, and unreliable, scornful of religion and of anyone who disagreed with him, only working when the spirit moved him’ (Leyland 1954, 37). However, his friends considered him good natured and generous, with a remarkable, though largely unfulfilled, talent. He was arrested for debt in 1850 and sent to Manor gaol in Halifax, where he remained until he died of dropsy on 28 January 1851. He was buried three days later in the Salem Chapel churchyard in Halifax.
Literary References: AJ, 1851, 140; DNB (Cust); Leyland 1954, 29-48; Leyland 1963, 91-107; Gunnis 1968, 239-40; ODNB (Greenwood)
Additional MS Sources: Leyland MSS