Leonard Stanford Merrifield

Merrifield was born at Wyck Rissington in Gloucestershire and initially trained as a stone carver before studying at the Cheltenham School of Art.^[1] He moved to London to study at the City and Guilds of London Art School and then at the Royal Academy Schools.^[1] Throughout his career Merrifield was based in London and created statuettes and portraits busts plus a number of larger public monuments, statues and war memorials.^[2]

From 1906 to 1940 Merrifield was a regular exhibitor at the Royal Academy in London.^[3] In 1919 at the Royal Academy Exhibition of War Memorials, Merrifield showed a design of a statute of a soldier with bayonet fixed standing in front of a Celtic cross.^[4] Merrifield was subsequently commissioned to create a version of this design for the war memorial at Burnham in Buckinghamshire.^[4] He received a gold medal from the Paris Salon in 1939 and exhibited with both the Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts and the Royal West of England Academy.^[1] He was heavily involved with the Art Workers' Guild and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of British Sculptors in 1926.^[1] The National Museum Wales holds a marble bust of Robert Drane (1832-1914) and a bronze Pieta by Merrifield.^[5]