Details of Sculptor

Surname

Theed

Alternative Surname

First Name

William II

Initial of Surname

T

Year of Birth/Baptism

1804

Flourished

Year of Death

1891

Biographical Details

Theed was a prominent and prolific sculptor, whose reputation was considerably enhanced by a close association with Albert, the Prince Consort. He produced a number of posthumous portraits of the Prince, some of which reached a popular market as reproductions in other materials.
He was born at Trentham, Staffs and christened in nearby Newcastle-under-Lyme on 2 May 1804, the son of William Theed I and his French wife Frances, née Rougeot. The family set up in London and Theed received some education in Ealing before beginning his training as a sculptor with his father and then spending several years working in the studio of E H Baily. In January 1820 he entered the Royal Academy Schools, where he won a silver medal in 1822. He also won two prizes from the Society of Arts (42, 187). He first exhibited at the RA in 1824 (90), giving his address as 76 Dean Street, Soho.
In 1826 Theed went to Rome, where he studied under Bertel Thorvaldsen, John Gibson, R J Wyatt and Pietro Tenerani. He took lodgings at 9 Vicolo degli Incurabili and sent a number of works, mostly busts, to London to the Academy exhibitions. In 1844-5, after nearly 20 years in Rome he received a commission which marked a turning point in his career. When Prince Albert resolved to commission a series of ten statues for the interior of Osborne House he sought advice on eligible sculptors from Gibson, and Theed was one of those recommended. Theed carved two ideal figures, Psyche lamenting the loss of Cupid (48) and Narcissus (47), both completed in 1847.
He returned to England in 1848 and soon established a highly successful practice from his studio at 12 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden. He showed a number of ideal works at the Great Exhibition (47, 49, 52, 53, 54 ) and three appeared in the Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition of 1857 (47, 49, 57). Further commissions for the Prince Consort included a Sappho (54) a bust of Periander (131) and decorative work at Buckingham Palace. In 1856 he completed a major contract which included six busts after the antique for the gallery above the grand staircase (134), reliefs for the banqueting room and lunette reliefs above the doors in a small gallery adjoining the dining room (180, 181). The Art Journal praised the decorative scheme and paid tribute to Theed’s contribution: ‘we think its general elevation in no small degree results from the happy character of Mr Theed’s statuary and bassi-relievi; these by their purity of form and graceful contour, give boldness and vigour to the general design of the apartments, which no flat painting could effect’ (AJ, 1856, 192). Elsewhere, he modelled a series of 12 reliefs of scenes from Tudor history, which were cast in bronze by Elkington and Co, for the newly rebuilt Palace of Westminster (186) and executed a statue of The bard for the Egyptian Hall of the Mansion House (65).
The mainstays of Theed’s production were portraiture and funerary monuments. He received commissions for many commemorative statues during his career, with examples in London, Manchester, Liverpool, Huddersfield, Grantham, Mumbai and Kolkata (50, 56, 61, 62, 64, 66, 70, 74, 75, 78, 80, 81, 84-86). His principal church monuments include those to Sir James Mackintosh and Sir Herbert Benjamin Edwardes in Westminster Abbey and to Henry Hallam in St Paul’s Cathedral (19, 37, 30). The monument to Humphrey Chetham in Manchester Cathedral is a richly carved seated figure in elaborate Jacobean dress (15). It was reproduced in parian ware by Copeland, who also made small-scale ceramic versions of some of his most popular statues and busts (49, 54, 57, 76, 143, 146, 159, 161).
One of his most prestigious contracts outside London was the series of bronze statues and busts for Wellington College, Berks, executed between 1858 and 1862 (68, 149). The College had patriotic resonance as a memorial to the Duke of Wellington, founded to educate the sons of officers killed on active service. The Prince Consort originally envisaged an ambitious series of statues of all the generals closely associated with Wellington, together with busts of 103 of his officers, each to be financed by the families of the individual depicted. Theed offered to execute the busts at a modest charge of about £50 each. It soon became clear however that many of the busts could not be funded and only 33 were completed, 27 of them by Theed.
On 14 December 1861 Prince Albert died of typhoid fever. Queen Victoria immediately set about commemorating her husband, bringing in Theed to make his death mask and casts of his hands (190) which the Queen kept by her bedside. Within two weeks of Albert’s death Theed was at Osborne, starting work on his first posthumous bust of the Prince (149). It was placed in the blue room at Windsor, where the Prince had died. A second bust, with draperies over one shoulder, was also completed that year (148). It was displayed in the entrance hall at Osborne, on an elaborate pedestal designed by Princess Alice and executed by Theed.
Theed was responsible for several commemorative statues of the Prince during the 1860s. The first, in Highland dress with a deerhound at his side, was inspired by John Phillip’s painting of 1858 (69). A marble version was placed below the principal staircase at Balmoral and a larger one, cast in bronze by Elkington & Co, was presented by the Queen to the tenants of the Balmoral estate and erected close to the castle on a rough-hewn rock plinth. The Queen gave yet another statue, of the Prince in Garter robes and holding a field marshal’s baton to the city of Coburg, Albert’s birthplace (73). Theed’s most romantic portrait of the Prince is the group of the royal couple in Anglo-Saxon costume at Frogmore, entitled The parting (77). The costume symbolises the close links between the English and German people, originating in the Anglo-Saxon period and re-inforced in recent years through the royal marriage. A version of the Coburg statue was erected in Sydney, Australia, and the Queen gave copies of the draped bust to several family members and loyal servants.
Theed was one of several leading sculptors involved in the Albert Memorial, 1864, in Kensington Gardens, London. Groups representing the Continents were executed by John Henry Foley, John Bell, Patrick MacDowell, and Theed, who contributed the colossal group of Africa (71). Theed’s initial model was considered the least satisfactory of the four by Sir Charles Eastlake, who oversaw the commission on the Queen’s behalf. He felt the composition lacked ‘a principal view’ of proper breadth and simplicity and among major changes he insisted on the substitution of a lion for a dromedary at the centre of the group (Royal Archives, Add H2/944, 1087-8 cited by Brooks 2000, 172, 177). Theed made the required modifications.
Theed continued to work well into the 1880s. The 1881 census returns show that he then lived at Campden Lodge, Kensington with his wife, Mary, and his son, the sculptor, Frank Theed, who exhibited busts and portrait medallions at the RA between 1873 and 1888. Theed died at Campden Lodge on 9 September 1891, aged 87.
His sculpture was praised in glowing terms in the 1862 International Exhibition catalogue, which paid tribute to his fusion of traditional practice with ‘a certain touch of common nature, and an unbending towards domestic affection, which serve to bring cold marble down from her chilly heights into the warmer sphere of human sympathies’ (AJ Cat 1862, 322). Approval was not however universal. F T Palgrave disliked his elaborate use of surface detail, particularly evident in the model for Prince Albert in Highland dress (69): the critic felt that the figure and head had been ‘sacrificed to the accoutrements’ (Palgrave 1866, 81-2). More recently Greenwood, commenting on the sculptor’s varied output, judged that ‘Despite his early immersion in the studios of the neo-classical sculptors in Rome, Theed developed into versatile and eclectic sculptor who was equally at ease with classicizing ideal works, historical realism and modern life portraiture’ (ODNB).
EH
Literary References: Palgrave 1886, passim; Athenaeum, 1891, ii, 393; The Times, 11 Sept 1891, 7; DNB LVI, 1898, 108-9; Gunnis 1968, 386-7; Baker 1979, passim; Bayley 1981, 103-7; Read 1982, passim; Darby and Smith 1983, passim; Grove 30, 1996, 703 (Stocker); Brooks 2000, passim
Wills and Administrations: PPR, will with two codicils, 30 September 1891, fol 976 (personal estate £40,508 6s 9d)