Details of Sculptor

Surname

Steell

Alternative Surname

First Name

Sir John

Initial of Surname

S

Year of Birth/Baptism

1804

Flourished

Year of Death

1891

Biographical Details

John Robert Steell was the first Scottish sculptor to achieve an international reputation without leaving his native land. He came from an artistic family: his father John Steell was a carver and gilder, his younger brother Gourlay Steell RSA (1819-94) became animal painter for Scotland to Queen Victoria and his nephew David George was an eminent Scottish painter. His son William had a successful practice as an architect.
Steell was born in Aberdeen on 18 September 1804. His family moved to Edinburgh about a year after his birth and at the age of 14 he was apprenticed to his father as a woodcarver, whilst studying at the Trustees’ Academy under the landscape painter, Andrew Wilson. In 1826 he married Elizabeth, the daughter of an Edinburgh merchant, John Graham.
After completing his apprenticeship in 1827, Steell went into partnership with his father at 6 Hanover Street, but his ambitious, even driven character and his personal charm marked him out for greater things. He began to work on independent sculpture projects and studied drawing at the Edinburgh Life Academy, which had been founded by his friend, the painter, David Scott. In 1827 Steell began work a colossal statue of Saint Andrew in wood for the North British Fire Insurance corporation (37). This work was the first of 58 submissions to Royal Scottish Academy exhibitions.
In 1829 Steell travelled to Rome, where he studied for at least five months and is known to have carved ‘ideal’ works, but once back in Edinburgh he was overwhelmed by a wave of commissions, principally for busts. He moved into premises at 23 Dundas Street and during the next 12 years changed address several times, before moving to 1 Randolph Place, which remained his studio from 1842 to 1888.
In 1830 he began work on a model of Alexander taming Bucephalus (39), which brought him to public attention and for which in 1833 he received a special prize of £50 from the Board of Manufactures, the governing body of the Trustees School of Design. Later that year it was shown in London, where it was highly praised, in particular by Sir Francis Chantrey, who urged Steell to move to London and offered to help him do so. Steell declined, saying that he preferred to remain in his native country and to concentrate on improving the quality of Scottish sculpture.
His influential early patrons included Thomas Thomson, Lord Meadowbank and the 5th Duke of Buccleuch, and Steell’s rapid rise to success may be attributed at least in part to their encouragement. In 1838 he became the first sculptor resident in Scotland to obtain royal patronage, receiving several sittings at Windsor Castle from Queen Victoria for a portrait bust (86) and a colossal statue (43) for the roof of the Royal Institution (Royal Scottish Academy), the first statue of the monarch raised in the British Isles after her accession to the throne. In 1838 he was appointed sculptor in ordinary to Her Majesty for Scotland. Royal patronage and support from the professional classes and members of the aristocracy gave Steell dominance of the Edinburgh market, and he received at least 28 commissions for large scale public monuments.
Steell’s seated figure of Sir Walter Scott for the Scott Monument in Princes Street, Edinburgh, 1840-46, is thought to be the first marble statue ever commissioned in Scotland from a native artist (44). Steell was responsible also for the first bronze statue cast in Scotland, the national monument to the Duke of Wellington, 1840-1852 (47). Work on this commission obliged him to open a foundry at his own expense in 1849, at 75 Grove Street, Edinburgh. The Grove foundry remained open until 1889 and was made regularly available to other sculptors. Many of Steell’s works, including his most imaginative composition, the Albert Memorial in Charlotte Square, Edinburgh, 1865-76 (61) were cast at the foundry.
Several of his commissions went abroad: in 1863 he carved a tympanum group of The wise and foolish virgins for the Standard Life Assurance building in Dublin (170) and in 1867 he sent relief sculpture to Canada for the pediment of the Bank of Montreal (172). A statue of Sir Walter Scott (60) was erected in Central Park, New York in 1872 and versions of his statue of Robert Burns, 1880, also for Central Park (63), went to Dunedin (where the unveiling of their statue drew a crowd of more than 8,000 New Zealanders), as well as London and Dundee.
Steell was knighted by the Queen in 1876, the first sculptor to be so honoured since Sir Francis Chantrey, on the evening of the inauguration ceremony for his Scottish national monument to the Prince Consort (61). In 1884 a bronze version of his Alexander taming Bucephalus, previously reproduced only as a statuette, was erected as a public testimony to him. He continued to work for another decade, but retired through ill-health in 1887, when he was given an annual pension of £100 from the civil list. He died at 24 Greenhill Gardens, his home for 37 years, on 15 September 1891 and was buried in Old Calton cemetery, Edinburgh. He received lengthy and respectable obituaries and coverage in the Dictionary of National Biography.
He does not appear to have had students, apprentices, or assistants who became sculptors. Instead he employed skilled artisans in his studio and foundry, including William Young, who had worked for Chantrey and Richard James Wyatt, and became Steell’s first master caster in 1849.
Steell’s style was grounded in neo-classicism but he was abreast of metropolitan trends. He was a brilliant portraitist, whose attention to detail and use of contemporary dress make him a major precursor of later 19th-century realism. His achievement, forgotten for a century after his death, was recognised in 1991 in the exhibition Virtue and Vision: Sculpture in Scotland 1540-1990. In her catalogue entry Fiona Pearson, summarised his achievement : ‘Steell was the sculptor ... of the first and last Victorian monuments in Scotland; he was the native school’.
Rocco Lieuallen
Literary References: Scotsman, 16 Sept 1891, 7 (obit); Gunnis 1968, 370-1; Banford 1973, 376-80; Read 1982, passim; Pearson 1991,73-7; Woodward 1977, 226-36; Grove 29, 1996, 584-5 (Pearson) ; Stocker 1999, 11-24; Lieuallen 2002
Archival References: Steell Press Cuttings, 4 vols, NLS MS.FB.m.55. Compiled by John Steell’s younger brother, Gresholm, these consist of news cuttings, photographs, pamphlets and longhand entries relating to the sculptor c1829-1877 and are the principal sources for Steell’s career. They are arranged chronologically.
Auction: Account of his studio sale (which listed some works and equipment), The Scotsman, 14 March 1888, 6
Portraits of the sculptor: Robert Scott Lauder, oil on canvas, 1827, Univ of Dundee; Robert Scott Lauder, oil on canvas, 1832, SNPG; George Reid, oil on canvas, 1883 Aberdeen Art Gallery; Hill & Adamson calotype, c1843-7, SNPG; J G Tunney photo, 1854, Royal Scottish Academy; unknown photographer, c1860