Thomas Brock

Brock was born on 1 March 1847 in Worcester.^[2] He was the only son of a painter and decorator and attended the Government School of Design in Worcester, after which he undertook an apprenticeship in modelling at the Worcester Royal Porcelain Works.^[6] In 1866 he became a pupil of the sculptor John Henry Foley and also enrolled in the Royal Academy Schools, where he won a gold medal for sculpture in 1869.^[6][7] He met and befriended Frederic, Lord Leighton, whose emphasis on realism and naturalism in sculpture led Brock to become part of the New Sculpture movement and to develop his talent for sympathetic and realistic portraiture.^[5] After Foley's sudden death in 1874, Brock finished several of his commissions, including the monument to Daniel O'Connell in Dublin and a large bronze equestrian statue of Lord Canning for Kolkata.^[6][8][9] It was his completion of Foley's statue of Prince Albert for the Albert Memorial which first brought Brock to prominence and secured his position as an establishment sculptor.^[8][7][10] He also assisted in the casting of Lord Leighton's greatly influential 1877 sculpture An Athlete Wrestling with a Python.^[11]

Brock was elected an associate of the Royal Academy in 1883 and became a full member in 1891.^[7] He was a founding member, and the first president, of the Society of British Sculptors.^[12]

Brock's group The Moment of Peril (now in the garden of Leighton House) was followed by The Genius of Poetry, at the Carlsberg Brewery in Copenhagen. A plaster model for Eve was shown at the Royal Academy in 1898; a marble version (1900) is in the collection of the Tate and Brock also cast some smaller bronze replicas and other imaginative works that mark his development.^[13] His portrait works include busts, such as those of Lord Leighton and Queen Victoria, statues, such as Sir Richard Owen and Henry Philpott, bishop of Worcester, and sepulchral monuments such as that of Lord Leighton in St Paul's Cathedral.^[1][7][12]

Brock made statues of Victoria to celebrate her golden and diamond jubilees and also designed the depiction of her "veiled" or "widowed" head, used on all gold, silver and bronze coinage between 1893 and 1901.^[12]

In 1901 Brock won the commission to make a colossal equestrian statue of Edward the Black Prince for Leeds City Square. The same year, he was given perhaps his most significant commission, the vast multi-figure Imperial Memorial to Queen Victoria, to be erected in front of Buckingham Palace.^[10] The unveiling of this memorial took place on 16 May 1911,^[14] and according to legend King George V was so moved by the excellence of the memorial that he called for a sword and knighted Brock on the spot.^[10] In any event, it was on the same day that the Lord Chamberlain’s Office notified The London Gazette that the king had ordered that Brock be appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath.^[15]

From 1914 to 1919 Brock returned to the post of president of the Society of British Sculptors.^[12]

Brock married in 1869 and had eight children. He died in London on 22 August 1922.^[5] He was buried at Mayfield, East Sussex (his home since 1905), in the churchyard of St Dunstan's church, where his family commissioned as a monument a granite and marble tomb chest, modelled on the one he had shortly before designed for Captain Charles Grant Seely at Gatcombe, Isle of Wight.^[16][17]

From 1877 until his death, Brock had his London studio in Osnaburgh Street, near Regent's Park. Brock Street, a short distance to the east, is named after him.^[91]

• List of statues of Queen Victoria (13 of the entries are by Brock)