Details of Sculptor

Surname

Brodie

Alternative Surname

First Name

William

Initial of Surname

B

Year of Birth/Baptism

1815

Flourished

Year of Death

1881

Biographical Details

Brodie was a successful portrait sculptor who worked in Edinburgh during the second half of the 19th century. He was born at Banff on 22 January 1815, the eldest son of a merchant seaman, John Brodie, and his wife Mary, née Waker. Alexander Brodie, who also practised as a sculptor, was his younger brother. The family settled in Aberdeen c1821 where, after serving an apprenticeship, William was employed as a plumber at the Broadford Works. In his leisure hours he studied science and art at the Aberdeen Mechanics Institute. He soon became proficient in modelling portrait medallions and miniature busts in wax and clay and by 1840 had begun to cast portraits of well-known figures in lead. During the same period he received additional instruction in drawing from George Washington Wilson, the pioneering photographer, and he developed a keen interest in phrenology, which was to inform his mature practice as a sculptor. He also studied oil painting and is reputed to have painted a number of portraits, particularly in the years after his marriage in 1841 to Helen Chisholm, herself an amateur painter.
In 1846 a number of Brodie’s wax medallions were exhibited by a Mr Hay, of Market Street, Aberdeen. The exhibition attracted the attention of two of Brodie’s earliest and most important patrons, Sheriff Watson of Aberdeen and the historian John Hall Burton. With their encouragement, Brodie moved to Edinburgh, where he attended the Trustees’ School of Design between 1847 and 1851 and was taught to model on a larger scale and to carve portrait busts. In 1848 he gained the highest premiums for modelling from the life and from the Antique. He exhibited annually at the Royal Scottish Academy from 1847 onwards, showing principally portrait busts. He also sent works to the Royal Academy in London, the Royal Glasgow Institute of Fine Arts and the Great Exhibition of 1851, where his contribution was a group of Little Nell and her grandfather (23). He was becoming well-established in Edinburgh by 1852 when he was elected an associate member of the Royal Scottish Academy.
At about this time Hall Burton introduced Brodie to the Glasgow merchant and philanthropist James Buchanan. As well as commissioning an architectural monument incorporating an undated marble bust for Dean Cemetery, Edinburgh (1), Buchanan financed the sculptor’s journey to Rome in 1853. There Brodie worked in the studio of Lawrence MacDonald and under his guidance executed a marble figure of Corinna, the lyric muse (26). It was exhibited to acclaim at the Royal Scottish Academy in 1855 and reproduced in Copeland parian ware in 1856. This commercial exploitation of Brodie’s first major ideal work and the adoption of the porcelain statuette as a prize by the Royal Association for the Promotion of the Fine Arts in Scotland set a precedent and his representations of Ruth and Penelephon, the beggar maid were promoted in the same way (45, 294).
Following his return to Edinburgh in 1854 Brodie worked from 10 Randolph Cliff for three years before moving to 9 Coates Place, West Maitland Street, where he remained until 1865, when he established a studio, named St Helen’s, in Cambridge Street. He attracted numerous commissions for portrait busts and his sitters included leading Scottish lawyers and politicians, such as Lord Rutherfurd, Henry Cockburn and Lord Moncrieff (93, 89, 122). After his death The Times credited him with having ‘executed more busts in portraiture than any other in the same line’ (The Times, 1 Nov 1881, 6). In addition he exhibited a number of large-scale portrait reliefs, a category later explored by his most distinguished pupil, James Pittendrich Macgillivray.
In 1862 Brodie carved a posthumous marble statue of Lord Cockburn for the Faculty of Advocates at Parliament House, Edinburgh (36). It was well received and prestigious public commissions in several Scottish cities followed, including the freestone monument to Prince Albert in Perth and a marble figure of Sir David Brewster for the University of Edinburgh (38, 54). The sculptor’s most prominent public works are two bronze seated statues commemorating Thomas Graham in Glasgow and Sir James Young Simpson in Edinburgh (44, 52). Although his proposal for the Scottish national memorial to the Prince Consort was rejected in favour of a design by Sir John Steell, he provided one of the four subsidiary groups which flank Steell’s statue of the Prince and represent different classes paying homage (51). He also competed unsuccessfully for the Glasgow statues of Dr David Livingstone and Thomas Campbell, both of which were executed by John G Mossman.
Brodie’s best loved work is a small bronze statue of Greyfriars’ Bobby, a Skye terrior famous for remaining faithfully beside his master’s grave in Greyfriars’ churchyard for fourteen years (260). The figure was commissioned by the philanthropist Baroness Burdett Coutts in 1871 and modelled from the life shortly before the dog’s death. During the same period the sculptor started work on a number of freestone statues depicting characters from the Waverley novels which decorate the architectural canopy of the Sir Walter Scott monument on Princes Street, Edinburgh (56).
In November 1876 Brodie was appointed Secretary to the Royal Scottish Academy, a post which he held until 1880, when he resigned due to failing health. On 30 October 1881, after almost two years of illness, he died of heart disease and oedema of the lungs at his principal residence, Douglas Lodge, Merchiston Place, Edinburgh. The sculptor, who was survived by his wife, a son and three daughters, was buried in Dean cemetery. His estate was valued at more than £11,700 and a sale of his studio equipment and stock-in-trade was conducted by Dowell’s of Edinburgh on 16, 17 and 19 December 1881.
EH
Literary References: Gunnis 1968, 62-3; Woodward 1977, vol 1, pt 2, 21-9; Read 1982, passim; ODNB (Smailes)
Additional MS Sources: Brodie Correspondence
Will: NAS SC70/4/192, 211 and 217, ESC will and inventory, 8 December 1881, with an additional inventory, 1 September 1882, property valued at £9,732 0s 8d and £2,508 4s 10d
Auction Catalogues: Brodie 1881
Portraits of the Sculptor: J G Tunny, photo, c1854, R Sc A, Edinburgh; J Phillip, canvas, exhib R Sc A, Edinburgh, 1859; A Rhind, canvas, 1875, formerly private coll, Scotland (untraced); Nesbitt & Lothian, carte de visite photo, NPG, London; J Phillip, canvas, nd, Aberdeen Art Gallery; photos, NLS, Edinburgh