Edward Onslow Ford

Edward Onslow Ford (27 July 1852 – 23 December 1901) was an English sculptor. Much of Ford's early success came with portrait heads or busts. These were considered extremely refined, showing his subjects at their best and led to him receiving a number of commissions for public monuments and statues, both in Britain and overseas. Ford also produced a number of bronze statuettes of free-standing figures loosely drawn from mythology or of allegorical subjects. These 'ideal' figures became characteristic of the New Sculpture movement that developed in Britain from about 1880 and of which Ford was a leading exponent.

Biography Early life Ford was born at Islington in north London, the son of businessman Edward Ford and Martha Lydia Gardner. His family moved to Blackheath while he was still a child. After he had spent some time at Blackheath Proprietary School, he went to Antwerp to study painting at Royal Academy of Fine Arts there during 1870 and 1871. Ford then studied under Michael Wagmüller in Munich until 1874, during which time he shared a studio with the sculptor Edwin Roscoe Mullins. Before leaving Munich, Ford married a fellow student Anne Gwendoline, the third daughter of Baron Frans von Kreusser, in 1873.

Portrait work

On returning to England around 1874, Ford settled at Blackheath and established a studio concentrating on portrait sculptures.

Much of Ford's early success came in portraiture. His portrait busts are extremely refined and show his subjects at their best. He sculpted many portrait busts which are noted for their tasteful conception, delicate modelling, and verisimilitude. The best, perhaps, are the heads of John Everett Millais, Thomas Huxley, Herbert Spencer, Sir WQ Orchardson, Matthew Ridley Corbet, the duke of Norfolk, Briton Rivière, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Sir Walter Armstrong, Sir Hubert von Herkomer, Arthur Hacker (1894), and M. Dagnan-Bouveret. These works, termed 'ideal figures', came to be regarded by art critics as among the defining works of the New Sculpture movement that had developed in Britain from about 1880 onwards as a reaction to the blandness of much other Victorian sculpture.

The modest scale of these works by Ford indicate they were not intended for grand country houses but rather for smaller domestic settings and, like other New Sculpture artists, Ford supported the commercial production of bronze statuettes and smaller copies of his work for the home market with Peace and other works by him becoming popular reproductions. A memorial statue by Ford from 1890, depicting General Gordon on a camel, stands at Brompton Barracks, Chatham, the home of the Royal School of Military Engineering. A second cast of the statue was installed in Khartoum from 1904 until 1958 when, shortly after Sudan achieved its independence, the statue was removed and relocated to Gordon's School at Woking in Surrey during 1959. The full-size statue was exhibited in the Egyptian Hall of The Crystal Palace in south London for a time and a statuette of the camel was shown at the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society in 1889. With the intended cemetery location in mind, Ford designed the monument with a tall and elaborate base in bronze and coloured marble featuring a mourning figure and winged lions supporting a marble figure of the drowned Shelley. Ford delivered the last of these early in January 1901, weeks before she died.

Death and legacy Around 1900, following an extended period of over-work and stress from financial worries, Ford developed heart disease but continued working at pace and died suddenly at his home in St John's Wood on 23 December 1901.

The Henry Moore Foundation in Leeds holds an archive of Ford's papers and correspondence. The Fine Art Society held a memorial exhibition for Ford in 1905, from which the Victoria and Albert Museum in London purchased a, unfinished, bronze titled Fate. Several other national collections in Britain hold examples of Ford's work, notably the Tate, the National Portrait Gallery in London, the Lady Lever Art Gallery on Merseyside and the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool.

Selected public works

Other works

Processional cross for Saint Matthew's Church, Sheffield Marble pulpit with bronze panels, c. 1888, St Mary-le-More, Wallingford Statue on pedestal of Chamarajendra Wadiyar X, the Maharaja of Mysore, 1898, Lal Bagh, Bangalore Bronze statue on pedestal of James Davidson Gordon, c. 1884, Gordon Park, Mysore A Bacchante bronze on a black stone base,1899, in Aberdeen Archives Art Gallery and Museum collection