Details of Sculptor

Surname

Earle family

Alternative Surname

First Name

of Kingston-upon-Hull

Initial of Surname

E

Year of Birth/Baptism

Flourished

Year of Death

Biographical Details

George Earle I 1748-1827
John Earle I c1779-1863
John Earle II b 1816
George Earle II c1810-1835
Joseph Earle 1821-1844
Thomas Earle 1810-1876
The Earles were a family of accomplished sculptors and masons who ran a thriving practice for three generations. George Earle I, the son of a York bricklayer, migrated to Hull c1776 and established himself as a stonemason, architect and speculative builder. From the outset he cultivated sound business and social connections. In 1781 he married Mary, the daughter of a stone mason and carver-gilder, Jeremiah Hargrave, whose son Joseph was architect and surveyor to the town. One of the witnesses at their wedding was Charles Mountain, a bricklayer, plasterer and stuccoist who subsequently became one of Hull’s most notable architects and builders. The Earles were involved with Mountain on a number of projects including Hesslewood, the country house built for the Hull merchant and banker J R Pease. They had three sons, George, Thomas and John. George and Thomas established a business as Hull merchants who were, for a time, the town’s leading importers of slate, stone and Italian marble.
John Earle I joined his father’s masonry business and was responsible for numerous competent but conventional funerary monuments in the East Riding and North Lincolnshire. His most unusual, to George Lambert, has a fine relief of a church organ, alluding to Lambert’s 40 years as organist at Holy Trinity, Hull (42). By 1814 John was managing the Earle yard on Osborne Street, Hull. He continued to work as a mason and architect but by the 1820s styled himself ‘sculptor’. The business flourished throughout the 1820s and Earle received a number of major commissions for architectural projects whilst continuing to provide a wide range of monuments. By October 1832, however, Earle’s business had collapsed and he was declared bankrupt, though he managed to stay in business. Competition stiffened as an increasing number of architects and stone and marble masons became established in the town, including George Bailey ‘statuary and mason’, John Waudby & Son, sculptors ‘of Hull and York’, and particularly William Day Keyworth. As late as 1863, the year of his death, Earle and Keyworth were the only two sculptors listed in the local trades’ directory.
Little is known of John Earle II. He undoubtedly received his initial training with his father before founding his own yard in Chapel Street, Hull. His only known work is a charming wall tablet with a mourning female figure (29). He appears to have left Hull sometime between 1841 and 1851.
George Earle II served his apprenticeship with his father and after working for a time at the Earle yard in Whitefriargate, he set up as a marble mason at 28 Junction Dock Street, Hull. He provided church monuments in Hull, the East Riding and North Lincolnshire and one further afield, at Barsham in Suffolk (33). He exhibited two portrait busts at the Exhibition of Fine Arts held in July 1827 at the Hull Assembly Rooms (115, 116). His finest monuments commemorate Simon Horner (24) and Horner Reynard (36). Both have delicate gothic detailing and are supported by figurative marble brackets.
George Earle II died prematurely. His father was in no position to take charge of his son’s yard at Junction Dock and the business was controlled by trustees over the next eight years. George’s younger brother Joseph Earle took over in 1843 and shortly afterwards he advertised his new ‘spacious marble works’ in the local press (Hull Advertiser, 21 April 1843). He had one yard at St John Street and another on Osbourne Street, the latter perhaps shared with his father, who was also working from Osborne Street. Joseph Earle died in February 1844, barely one year after taking charge. Only four signed works by him are known, all simple wall tablets (11, 35, 45, 47). His workshop at St John Street was taken over by George Bailey ‘Statuary and Mason, successor to the late Joseph Earle’ (E R Yorks Archives office, DDCC/2/72).
The most talented and successful family member was Thomas Earle. He was born in Hull and began his career as a sculptor at the age of 12, when it was already evident that he had a talent for modelling. He was undoubtedly apprenticed to his father, but supplemented his early education at the Mechanics’ Institute where his father was among the founder members. Since there was no school of art in Hull until 1861, the Mechanics’ Institute, established in 1825, was invaluable to aspiring artists, since it had a drawing class and a model room containing a ‘good collection of casts and models’ (Sheahan, 1868, 646). The Mechanics’ Institute commissioned Thomas Earle’s first public work in 1832, a statue of Dr John Alderson (66). When the statue was unveiled the Mechanics’ Institute was congratulated for encouraging an enterprising young artist, who ‘would at a future day, if blessed with life and health, deservedly rank with the most distinguished statuaries of Britain, or Europe’ (Hull Advertiser, 16 September 1831).
Thomas Earle left Hull c1830-31 and became a designer and modeller for Sir Francis Chantrey RA, remaining with him for between eight and twelve years. In January 1832, on Chantrey’s recommendation, he was admitted as a probationer at the Royal Academy and the following December became a student at the Academy schools. In 1839 he was awarded the Academy’s gold medal for the best historic group, Hercules deliverung Hesione from the sea monster (69), which was exhibited at the Academy in 1840.
By 1851 Earle had his own London studio at Vincent Street, Ovington Square. He competed for national commissions, including the monuments to Nelson and the Duke of Wellington (111, 94), but it was his continued association with Hull that brought prosperity. Like his father and grandfather before him, Thomas Earle was a member of the Minerva lodge of freemasons in Hull. This fraternity played a significant role, for it brought sound professional associations with architects and builders and also led to patronage from fellow members including the Earls of Zetland and Yarborough (128, 133, 154). In 1846 Thomas married Mary, the daughter of a local builder, Frank Appleyard. The Appleyards had worked with the Earles on a number of building projects in Hull and were also freemasons. Earle’s friendship with another freemason, C S Todd, the town clerk of Hull, appears to have been instrumental in securing him the commission for Hull’s statues of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert (102, 103). Freemasonry may also have played a part in Thomas Earle’s introduction to Sir Francis Chantrey, a member of the Royal Somerset & Inverness Lodge.
In February 1860 Todd wrote to Thomas Earle informing him that the Mayor, Z C Pearson, was to present Hull with a public park and that the authorities intended to commission a statue of the Queen, similar to Matthew Noble's figure in Peel Park, Manchester (Hull City Archives, BHH 115/716). Since both Todd and Pearson were freemasons, Earle must have been confident of securing the commission. Having agreed terms, Earle prepared a small model (Hull City Archives, BHH 97/369) which found favour with the Mayor who then announced his intention of presenting the townspeople of Hull with a statue of the Queen executed by ‘their townsman’ Thomas Earle (Hull City Archives, BHH 116/462).
Pearson was declared bankrupt in 1862, but his successor, Mayor W H Moss, agreed to pay for the statue, which was unveiled on 29 October 1863. On 7 November the Illustrated London News reported: ‘an intellectual expression has been produced, and the drapery and accessories, are elegant and graceful ... The statue of the Queen has received the approval of several members of the Royal family’. Having secured the commission for Queen Victoria's statue, Todd wrote to Earle in April 1863 to suggest that ‘with a little management’ a commission for a statue of Prince Albert might be forthcoming ‘as a companion' (Hull City Archives BHH 118/8). Earle’s initial proposal, for placing a figure of Prince Albert on the same pedestal as the statue of the Queen, was rejected. He won approval for a replica of his statue of Prince Albert executed for the Licensed Victuallers’ Asylum in Kennington (102). The Hull commission was again plagued by financial difficulties from the outset, but the statue of Albert was eventually unveiled on 14 October 1868.
Although Thomas Earle executed many portrait busts, few survive. His most ambitious and successful monument, to Thomas Ferres, has a life-sized figure of an angel supporting an exhausted seaman (60). A regular exhibitor at the Royal Academy and the British Institute, Earle had a passion for ‘ideal’ sculpture and his first work in the prestigious but often unremunerative genre was shown at the Academy in 1834, while he was still employed by Chantrey (67). In 1842 he exhibited the life-size relief, Abel and Thirza (168), which the Art Union considered ‘a fine conception wrought out with much ability’ (AU, 1842, 128). In 1844 he showed An ancient Briton protecting his family at Westminster Hall (74). The Literary Gazette maintained that ‘nothing could surpass the arrangement and composition of the female and children, and the modelling of the young ones [is] most exquisite and masterly’ (Lit Gaz, 1844, 483). When the work was exhibited the following year at the Leeds Polytechnic Exhibition it was described as ‘a master-piece, worthy of any age or nation’ a work that would ‘ensure the artist a fame that will endure for ever’ (Leeds Polytechnic exhib cat, 9 June, 1845, n p). Few of his ideal works were realised in marble, though the Earl of Yarborough commissioned two, Happy as a queen (91) and Fisher boy (83).
Thomas Earle was the last sculptor member of the Earle family and he died without issue in May 1876. He was interred at Spring Bank cemetery in Hull and since he was still considered a local celebrity, a large funeral procession paid tribute to the memory of the town’s talented citizen. He is commemorated by a fine monument of his own workmanship at Holy Trinity, Hull (65).
His widow, Mary, sold some of the studio contents including a model of the Ferres monument (60), which went to Hull’s Trinity House Seaman’s Guild for £20. Several other works were donated to institutions including the South Kensington Museum (93, 105). Mary Earle was still in possession of numerous pieces (now lost) in 1881, which she loaned to the exhibition of works of local arts held at the Hull Temperance Club.
Gerardine Mulcahy
Literary References: Jones’s Mercantile Directory of the Shipping Port of Hull, 1863-64; Gunnis 1968, 137-8; Colvin 1995, 327-8; Mulcahy 2000
Miscellaneous Drawings: Original Sketches by Thos. Earle, Sculptor, of Hull, Earle file, Hull Maritime Museum; these include a sketch of a foot ‘from the Antique’, (two versions, one signed); sketch of The Wrestlers; design for a medallion of a mother and two children; design for a church monument depicting a female mourning figure with a funerary urn; design for a church monument with a female mourning figure with flowing hair, and a draped funerary urn; design ‘No. 4’ for a church monument with a seated female mourning figure; design ‘No. 5’ for a church monument with a female mourning figure prostrate over a tomb chest (signed); design for a church monument featuring a semi-recumbent female figure with discarded book; design ‘No. 81’ for a church monument with two female mourning figures and a sarcophagus incorporating a portrait; design ‘No. 38’ for a church monument with two female mourning figures and a sarcophagus incorporating a portrait; Faith supporting a rustic Cross, design ‘No 6’ for a church monument (with dimensions and recommended materials ) (Mulcahy 2000 (1), passim)
Portraits of the Sculptors: Anon, portrait of Thomas Earle, oil on canvas, nd., Wilberforce House Museum, Kingston-upon-Hull