International studio (58.1916)

Modem British Sculptors


“TRAGIC PROCESSION'” (DETAIL OF SHAKESPEARE MONUMENT)

BY CHARLES WHEELER

imaginative compositions, The Kelpie was in the
recent exhibition at Messrs. Warings. A statuette
by him of Robert Louis Stevenson drew praise
from that discerning critic, Mr. Edmund Gosse.
Mr. F. V. Blundstone, who won the coveted
‘’Gold” in 1907, was born in Switzerland of
English and French parentage. His early studies
in art took place at Ashton-under-Lyne, and being
specially interested in animals he was often to be
found at the Manchester Zoo. While there, still
in his teens, he took a cast of a dead lion, and this
work brought him into contact with Mr. Herbert
Dicksee, who has ever since been a good friend to
him. Migrating to the Metropolis Mr. Blundstone
studied at the South London Technical Art School
and at the Royal Academy, where he won various
prizes from 1904 onwards. Following, perhaps, the
advice of Sir W. B. Richmond in one of the

Academy Lectures in 1906, he travelled in Egypt
as well as in Greece and Italy, having as a com-
panion the Gold Medallist for Painting, the late
Mr. Francis Crisp, who gave up his life for his
country in the present war. Mr. Blundstone is
assistant to Mr. Gilbert Bayes in the Modelling
Department of the Sir John Cass Techn'cal Insti-
tute. His Boy and Fruit (p. 22), a bronze figure
for a garden, is one of the best of those chubby
figures which have been produced in recent years,
and The Age of Imagination (p. 23) is altogether
charming. Aviation and the Drama, a group in
silver modelled by him, was presented by members
of the Green Room Club to Mr. Robert Loraine.
The next winner of the Gold Medal (1909) was
Mr. Alfred Buxton, whose Salamis—The Mourners
is given on p. 24. The subject is rendered
convincingly, with the dramatic touch which


“ GIRL AND LIZARD ”
26

(Tate Gallery, Chantrey Purchase c()°7)

BY S. M. WIENS