Details of Sculptor

Surname

Butler

Alternative Surname

First Name

Timothy

Initial of Surname

B

Year of Birth/Baptism

1806 -

Flourished

Year of Death

Biographical Details

He was christened on 24 October 1806 at Camersham, Oxon, the son of Timothy Butler and his wife Sarah. Nothing is known of his early life but he trained as a sculptor in the studio of William Behnes at 91 Dean Street, Soho. In 1824 he won a large silver medal from the Society of Arts for a plaster model after the antique (15) and in November 1825 entered the Royal Academy Schools, where he was awarded a silver medal in 1827. He exhibited at the RA between 1828 and 1879, showing about 100 portrait busts. He appears to have established his own studio by 1835, when his address was 30 Gower Place. He moved to 1 Middlesex Place in 1845 and then to 270 Marylebone Road in 1858.
Butler was a popular portrait-sculptor and his busts seem to have been excellent likenesses. In 1842 he executed one of Sir James Eyre (40) which the Art Union considered ‘a work which would do honour to the greatest of our sculptors’ (AU, 1842, 128). The outspoken art critic F T Palgrave was an admirer of the sculptor’s work. He described the bust of Professor Narrien (93) as ‘in the grand and thoroughly sculpturesque manner of Mr. Behnes’ and noted that, like other works by the artist it was ‘careful and conscientious in every detail’ and appeared ‘to convey a genuine likeness’ (Palgrave 1866, 83). A number of Butler’s busts were posthumous portraits including that of the infant Charles William O’Malley (49). He executed statues of the Earl of Leicester for Dereham town hall, and Richard Cobden for Bradford wool exchange (16, 17).
Butler also undertook decorative work, designing lamp standards which were set up on the Thames Embankment ‘at the landing place between Waterloo and Hungerford Bridge’ in 1870 and lions’ heads for ‘the pedestals both on the north and south side of the river’. The lamps featuring figures of boys climbing the shaft of the lamp to light the globe at the top, were intended to represent ‘the energetic spirit which characterises the British nation’ (Builder, 1870, 210).
The census records show that by 1881 Butler was a widower, living at 186 Euston Road with a daughter, who was a sculptress, and a son who was an artist. John Adams-Acton, a successful portrait sculptor of the later 19th century, trained in Butler’s studio.
Literary References: Palgrave 1866, 42, 83, 206, 221, 225, 294; Gunnis 1968, 74-5; Read 1982, 21, 69, 123
Archival References: RA admissions; RA premium list; IGI