Details of Sculptor

Surname

Lucas

Alternative Surname

First Name

Richard Cockle

Initial of Surname

L

Year of Birth/Baptism

1800

Flourished

Year of Death

1883

Biographical Details

Lucas was a versatile artist who worked in a diverse range of media but particularly specialised in small scale wax models and ivory carvings. He was born at Harnham Mill, near Salisbury, on 24 October 1800, the grandson of a woollen manufacturer. At the age of 12 he was apprenticed to an uncle who worked as a cutler in Winchester and he soon became skilled in intricate, small-scale carving. He later recalled, ‘I made twelve pairs of scissors so small that they were enclosed in a peach stone; this I elaborately carved … made hinges to it, wrote on its polished insides the Lord’s Prayer so that it could be magnified and read, and sold it to a lady for a golden guinea’ (Lucas Autobiography, cited by Bilbey 2002, 327). In 1828 he moved to 3 Pickering Terrace, London and at the age of 25, entered the Royal Academy Schools, where he trained under Sir Richard Westmacott. He was awarded silver medals in 1828 and 1829.
Lucas worked from a number of London addresses before 1849, when he moved to Otterbourne, near Winchester, and then to Chilworth, near Southampton, where he settled in 1854. He exhibited at the Royal Academy, 1829-59, showing principally busts, medallions and mythological subjects. In 1844 he sent two ideal works to the Westminster Hall Exhibition organised by the Royal Fine Art Commissioners, who were responsible for commissioning paintings and sculpture for the new Palace of Westminster. His statue of Canute rebuking his flatterers was not well received (29). One reviewer commented, ‘it is deficient of all those aids and graces which, with much propriety, might have entered into the treatment. The work, on the whole, is heavy and appears not to have been sufficiently studied’ (AU, 1844, 215). The second entry, a group entitled Lilla by his own death preserves the life of Edwin, was more successful (30).The Literary Gazette considered that it ‘embodies original ideas, is ably treated and the group of the three figures tells well in several view points’ (Lit Gaz, 20 July 1844, 466). Lucas showed ivory carvings and imitation bronzes, chiefly of classical subjects, at the Great Exhibition of 1851.
In the course of his career he received a number of significant commissions for funeral monuments and public statues. His monument to the Count de Salis has a recumbent effigy (1) whilst that to Sir Richard Colt Hoare takes the form of a seated portrait statue (3). He provided figures of Samuel Johnson for Lichfield and Isaac Watts, the nonconformist scholar and writer, for Southampton (22, 33). Both have reliefs depicting scenes from the subject’s life on the pedestal.
Unfortunately Lucas is remembered principally for his involvement in the controversy surrounding a wax bust of Flora at the Bodemuseum, formerly the Kaiser Friedrich Museum, in Berlin (89). The bust was acquired for the museum by the respected Renaissance scholar Wilhelm von Bode in 1909 as an important work by Leonardo da Vinci. Authorship was called into question when Lucas’s son, Albert Dürer Lucas, claimed that his father had made the bust in 1846. The evidence is contradictory and the debate has continued intermittently ever since without being fully resolved. It seems possible that the bust was restored, rather than modelled by Lucas.
He devoted much time to the study of ancient monuments and in 1845 made two models of the Parthenon, showing it both as he thought it might have appeared when newly erected, and also after it was damaged in an explosion in 1687 (268, 269). Each measured 12 feet in length and was constructed in wood, with the sculptural parts modelled in wax. They were purchased for the British Museum and displayed in the Elgin Room with the Parthenon sculpture. In the same year he published his findings as Remarks on the Parthenon: being the results of studies and inquiries connected with the production of two models of that noble building. The Builder welcomed the introduction of the models to the Elgin Room and praised Lucas for the scholarship, taste and sound judgement displayed in his reconstruction of the ancient edifice, enthusiastically declaring, ‘A new world of art seems disclosed to us. For the first time we behold the true character of Greek architecture’ (Builder, 1845, 593). Charles Newton, keeper of Greek and Roman antiquities at the British Museum, disliked Lucas and was less impressed by his archaeological efforts. After Lucas visited him in August 1859 with plans for a similar ‘restoration’ of the recently excavated mausoleum at Halicarnassus, Newton wrote to a colleague, ‘He [Lucas] is evidently mad but as he persuaded the late Sir R. Peel to buy his rubbishy restored model of the Parthenon contrary to every person qualified to judge in the matter, he may succeed in his present object if not watched’ (Newton/Panizzi, cited by Jenkins 1992, 192). Lucas was permitted to study the marbles from Halicarnassus at the museum and wrote a report on the mausoleum, but the museum authorities turned down his offer to sell them models and diagrams.
Lucas pursued his interest in architecture, painting, illustration and photography. In 1854 he designed and built himself a house, Chilworth Tower, and two years later published an account of it, illustrated with 17 plates, entitled, An Artist's Dream Realized. The house was sold some years later and Lucas built another nearby, called 'The Tower of the Winds', in homage to the original on the Acropolis. Neither building has survived. He produced large numbers of etchings, including illustrations to Thomas Gray’s Elegy written in a Country Churchyard, Oliver Goldsmith’s The Deserted Village and Robert Burns's Tam O’Shanter, as well as biblical subjects and representations of his own works. His writings range from art-historical studies, such as An essay on ancient glass painting published in 1877, to a whimsical unpublished fairy-tale called Hetty Lottie and the Proceedings of Little Dick, showing how he woo’d and won a fairy (Hartley Library, University of Southampton). A contemporary described him as ‘a man of great conversational powers and a prolific writer in the periodical press’ (DNB, XXXIV, 1893, 240).
With the support of Lord Palmerston, who was a friend and patron, in 1865 Lucas secured a civil list pension of £150, in return for donating 22 ivories, 12 waxes and a marble group to the South Kensington Museum. Lucas was proud to have his works displayed at such a prestigious institution and later wrote, ‘it is a comfort to me to live and yet be exhibited as an old master’ (Lucas 1870, cited by Bilbey 2002, 327). He died at his home at Chilworth on 18 January 1883 and was buried at the local church, where he is commemorated by a portrait medallion of himself, carved in 1840 (2). His only son, Albert Dürer Lucas, was a flower painter who exhibited works at the British Institution and the Suffolk Street Galleries between 1859 and 1874.
EH
Literary References: Builder, 1845, 593-4, 619; Athenaeum, 27 Jan 1883, 127-8; DNB, XXXIV, 1893, 240 (O'Donoghue); Sparrow 1926, 220; Gunnis 1968, 244-5; Ormond 1973, 276-7; Pyke 1973, 82-6; Jones 1990, 303-7 (Kratz and Bloc); Jenkins 1992, 93, 97, 192-3; Dawson 1999, 118-20; Bilbey 2002, 327-8; ODNB (Rev. Edwards); Willows 2004, 56-62; De Chair 2014, 159-70
Archival References: RA admissions; RA premium list; IGI
Additional MS Sources: Lucas Fragment; Lucas Miscellanea; Lucas Monument; Lucas/Granville; Lucas/Owen; Lucas/Peel
Wills and Administrations: Winchester probate registry, 13 June 1883, personal estate valued at £173 6s 6d; resworn August 1883 at £573 6s 6d
Collections of Drawings, Prints and Photographs: album of 24 drawings of the life of Christ, 1842 (HMI Archive Luc II); 49 drawings and 26 etchings including studies of Westminster Abbey and illustrations to the Book of Ruth, some in albums, many dating from the 1840s (HMI Archive Luc); etched illustrations to Tam O’Shanter, 1841 (Edinburgh University lib Ve.5.5); ‘Facsimiles of Nature’, a series of coloured impressions of leaves, etc, 1858 (BL Tab.442.a.12); ‘My Album’, 269 etchings and 3 photographs of Chilworth Tower (BM P&D 1859-8-6-946-1218); photographic studies, portraits, landscapes and groups, with MS explanations by the artist, 1859 (BL Tab.442.a.13); ‘book of photographs done by R. C. Lucas, sculptor, made on Lord Palmerston confering [sic] him a pension from the Royal bounty’, 1865 (Hartley lib, University of Southampton, rare books Cope 73 LUC); ‘some of the works and phases of R. C. Lucas, sculptor, of the Tower of the Winds, Chilworth, Hants’, 1865 (Hartley lib, Univ of Southampton, rare books Cope 73 LUC); album of 33 photographs (VAM P&D E.646-1998)
Miscellaneous Drawings, Prints and Photographs: ‘Life, death and fancy’, an allegorical etching (Wellcome Institute Library)
Portraits of the Sculptor: two self-portraits, busts (88, 90); self-portrait medallion, the sculptor’s funeral monument (2); self-portrait etching, with pen and wash, 1858, NPG 1651b; self-portrait etching, BM P&D; ‘Some of the phases and works of R C Lucas Sculptor done to show the great range of his expression’, a collection of largely self-portrait photographs, c1858, NPG Album 62; ‘50 Studies of Expressions’, an album of self-portrait photographs, 1865 (George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film, Rochester, NY, 81:1265:0000); self-portrait photo, BM P&D