- Thomas Woolner
and poet.
Born in
Hadleigh ,Suffolk he was a founder-member of thePre-Raphaelite Brotherhood . Woolner trained with the sculptorWilliam Behnes , exhibiting work at theRoyal Academy from 1843.al inclinations were rather difficult to reconcile with Pre-Raphaelite Medievalism, but his belief in close observation of nature was consistent with their aims.
Woolner's sculptures immediately after the foundation of the Brotherhood in 1848 display close attention to detail. He made his name with forceful portrait busts and medallions, but was at first unable to make a living.
He was forced to emigrate to
Australia for a period, but eventually returned to Britain, soon establishing himself as both a sculptor and art-dealer. His visit to Australia nevertheless helped him to obtain commissions there and elsewhere for statues of British imperial heroes, such asCaptain Cook andSir Stamford Raffles .However, his most personal and complex works in sculpture are probably "Civilisation" and "Virgilia". These demonstrate his attempt to express the tension between the static stone and the dynamic desires of the figures represented emerging into solidity from it.
He was elected to the Royal Academy in 1875 and served as professor of
sculpture from 1877 to 1879.Woolner was also a poet of some reputation in his day. His early poem "My Beautiful Lady" is a Pre-Raphaelite work, emphasising intense unresolved moments of feeling. His later narrative works, "Pygmalion", "Silenus" and "Tiresius" renounce Pre-Raphaelitism in favour of an often eroticised classicism.
Woolner was a close friend of
Alfred Tennyson , providing him with the scenario for his poem "Enoch Arden". His speculations about human anatomy also impressedCharles Darwin , who named part of the human ear the 'Woolnerian Tip' after a feature in Woolner's sculpture "Puck".Thomas Woolner died instantly from a
stroke at the age of 67. His son, Hugh, was a Titanic survivor.External links
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* [http://www.visitcumbria.com/woolner.htm Thomas Woolner in "Cumbria"]
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