Details of Sculptor

Surname

Lyon

Alternative Surname

First Name

Edwin

Initial of Surname

L

Year of Birth/Baptism

c1806

Flourished

Year of Death

1853

Biographical Details

Lyon was a native of Liverpool, where his father, George Lyon, had a business listed in local directories as ‘house, sign and ornamental painters, glass stainers, winder, etc’. He was admitted to drawing classes at the Liverpool Academy in January 1824 and was in London in 1826, returning to Liverpool in the following year, where he attended drawing classes in 1827-28. Lyon became an associate member of the Liverpool Academy by 1828 and was elected a full member in 1832. In 1829 he provided the drawings and commentary for a book on the sculpture of the Temple of Aphaia on the Greek island of Aegina, based on plaster casts in the Liverpool Royal Institution. The following year, on 21 January, he married his first wife, Elizabeth Sanderson, at St George, Everton. Lyon exhibited at the Liverpool Academy in most years between 1824 and 1832, showing portrait busts and a few ideal works. He sent one of these, a figure of Diomed going to meet the council of the Grecians, to the British Institution in London in 1827 (2).
Between 1834 and 1836-37 the sculptor was in Dublin. He never exhibited at the Royal Hibernian Academy, but was nonetheless elected an associate member on 18 January 1836. While there he executed two miniature wax busts (21, 22). Returning home, he attended meetings and exhibited at the Liverpool Academy in 1837 and 1838. He did not remain in Liverpool long, for the Academy records state that on 25 February 1840 it was resolved that ‘owing to the number of absenses of Mr E Lyon who has removed to America he be no longer a member of the Academy and therefore be excluded’ (Liverpool Academy Minute Book, Walker Art Gallery, in Bacot and Lambdin 1977, 555).
By April 1844 Lyon was living and working in Natchez, Mississippi, where he appears to have remained until his death, nine years later. A number of reports in the New Orleans newspapers indicate that he also had a studio in that city for a brief period towards the end of 1846. One report read ‘Mr Edwin Lyon, an artist of great skill, taste and ingenuity has visited our city for the purpose of modelling numerous busts. By an original process the model is first moulded in clay, and an accurate likeness taken, and then completed by being cast in a species of composition of which the principal ingredient is wax, and which gradually hardens, assuming the finest of polish and having the appearance of purest marble. Specimens may be seen at Mr. Lyon's Studio, No. 6 Carondelet Street ...’ (New Orleans Bee, 20 October 1846, in Bacot and Lambdin 1977, 557 n 1). On 17 Auguust 1848 he married his second wife, Caroline Polkinghorn Bray, widow of Isaiah Bray, in Natchez. In 1850-52 he worked from a rented shop on Main Street, at the corner of Canal Street, and on 27 February 1852 he bought a large lot on Lower Frankin Street. He moved his business there by 1853 and renamed it the Natchez Marble Yard.
During his time in America Lyon seems to have come close to securing a prestigious public commission. In 1851 a Louisiana newspaper announced ‘We are happy for the honour of Mississippi, to state, that one of their own resident artists, Edwin Lyon, of Natchez, has been selected by the “Monument Association" to build the marble monument to be erected at the State Capitol in honour of the Mississippi Volunteers ... who lost their lives, in their country's cause, in the late Mexican War. The Model sent by Mr Lyon, we understand, was adopted by the committee in preference to all others, and thus he has become the architect of his own design ...’ (Concordia Intelligencia, 9 November 1851, in Bacot and Lambdin 1977, 556-7) (4). Sadly, the memorial sculpture appears not to have been executed for no further references to it have been traced and the model itself is lost.
Lyon died of yellow fever, on 29 August 1853 and was buried in Natchez Cemetery. His widow clearly continued the business for a time after his death for several monuments in that cemetery are signed ‘Mrs Lyon’. Bacot and Lambdin suggest that she may have directed skilled slaves in this operation since she is known to have inherited one, named Clifton, from her husband, and to have hired three more, one of them a stonecutter, from a Mr Linder. The inventories of Lyon's business and personal estate, made after his death, suggest that in addition to carving he may have practiced other arts learned in his father's workshop in Liverpool, after he moved to America. Besides ‘block Italian’, ‘American stone’ and other materials for sculpture, he had items such as ‘lights glass’, ‘gold leaf’, paints and brushes. No examples of stained glass or paintings by him have been traced.
EH
Literary References: Strickland II, 1913, 35-6; Pyke 1973, 86; Bacot and Lambdin 1977, 554-9