DOI article:
Reddie, Arthur: Albert Toft: Sculptor
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21214#0029
Albert Toft, Sculptor
and penetrating Realism (he has been criticised
for being too much a realist) as the basis for the
gradual development of his Ideals. Sir Joshua
Reynolds, in his “Discourses on Art,” said : “In-
vention, strictly speaking, is little more than a new
combination of those images which have been
previously gathered and deposited in the memory :
nothing can come of nothing: he who has laid up
no materials can produce no combinations.” Here
is a truism which has been lately in certain quarters
noisily derided ; the notion of a small short-sighted
section of ultra-modern artists (with more ist than
art in their composition), being that the works of
God should have no influence upon, and can
easily be surpassed by the works of man. In
fact, logically, their creed would seem to suggest
that the greatest artist might be he who, born
blind, was consequently troubled by no visual
impressions of the material world.
Realism is the scaffolding whereby
Mr. Toft erects the building of his
Ideal. Too often the young artist of
to-day discards the scaffolding before
the building is complete.
Nasatur non fit is to some extent
true of the sculptor, as of the poet,
and Mr. Toft may be cited as a case
in point of the value and significance
of inherited tendencies. Born in
1862, in a suburb of Birmingham, he
comes of an old family of artists for
long connected with the Staffordshire
potteries. His father, the late Charles
Toft, a man of talent not only as art-
worker, but also as an inventor, was
for many years chief modeller and
designer at Birmingham for the firm
of Elkington & Co., afterwards leaving
them to work for Messrs. Josiah
" edgwood and Sons of Etruria. It
was here that Albert Toft was ap-
prenticed as a modeller for pottery.
His evenings were spent in the art-
schools at Hanley and Newcastle-
under-Lyme, and when eighteen years
old a National Scholarship, gained at
the latter school, took him to London
for two years at the Royal College of
Art. Scholarships were not then of
such lengthy tenure as they are to-
c a) > and at the expiration of his time
South Kensington, spent for the
m°St studying from the life
6r Pr°fessor Lanteri, young Toft,
fired with the ambition to devote his energies to
sculpture, set out upon what proved a very hard
road and an uphill struggle. Notwithstanding that
he had many tempting inducements to return to
his modelling for pottery he never wavered from
his decision.
Like many another artist who has risen to an
enviable position in his profession, Mr. Toft passed
through lean and trying years, and much might be
written concerning his struggles. But, to him as
to others, through eating the bread of adversity
has come a deep knowledge of life, and broad
sympathies; his hard experiences proved him, and
have gone towards the formation of character, have
purged his artistic outlook of all traces of aesthetic
dilettantism, while a warm and genial temperament
saved him from loss of enthusiasm, and from the
bitterness and sourness which are sometimes left,
BUST
OF THE RT. HON. JESSE COLLINGS, M-T- (MARB D albert toft
and penetrating Realism (he has been criticised
for being too much a realist) as the basis for the
gradual development of his Ideals. Sir Joshua
Reynolds, in his “Discourses on Art,” said : “In-
vention, strictly speaking, is little more than a new
combination of those images which have been
previously gathered and deposited in the memory :
nothing can come of nothing: he who has laid up
no materials can produce no combinations.” Here
is a truism which has been lately in certain quarters
noisily derided ; the notion of a small short-sighted
section of ultra-modern artists (with more ist than
art in their composition), being that the works of
God should have no influence upon, and can
easily be surpassed by the works of man. In
fact, logically, their creed would seem to suggest
that the greatest artist might be he who, born
blind, was consequently troubled by no visual
impressions of the material world.
Realism is the scaffolding whereby
Mr. Toft erects the building of his
Ideal. Too often the young artist of
to-day discards the scaffolding before
the building is complete.
Nasatur non fit is to some extent
true of the sculptor, as of the poet,
and Mr. Toft may be cited as a case
in point of the value and significance
of inherited tendencies. Born in
1862, in a suburb of Birmingham, he
comes of an old family of artists for
long connected with the Staffordshire
potteries. His father, the late Charles
Toft, a man of talent not only as art-
worker, but also as an inventor, was
for many years chief modeller and
designer at Birmingham for the firm
of Elkington & Co., afterwards leaving
them to work for Messrs. Josiah
" edgwood and Sons of Etruria. It
was here that Albert Toft was ap-
prenticed as a modeller for pottery.
His evenings were spent in the art-
schools at Hanley and Newcastle-
under-Lyme, and when eighteen years
old a National Scholarship, gained at
the latter school, took him to London
for two years at the Royal College of
Art. Scholarships were not then of
such lengthy tenure as they are to-
c a) > and at the expiration of his time
South Kensington, spent for the
m°St studying from the life
6r Pr°fessor Lanteri, young Toft,
fired with the ambition to devote his energies to
sculpture, set out upon what proved a very hard
road and an uphill struggle. Notwithstanding that
he had many tempting inducements to return to
his modelling for pottery he never wavered from
his decision.
Like many another artist who has risen to an
enviable position in his profession, Mr. Toft passed
through lean and trying years, and much might be
written concerning his struggles. But, to him as
to others, through eating the bread of adversity
has come a deep knowledge of life, and broad
sympathies; his hard experiences proved him, and
have gone towards the formation of character, have
purged his artistic outlook of all traces of aesthetic
dilettantism, while a warm and genial temperament
saved him from loss of enthusiasm, and from the
bitterness and sourness which are sometimes left,
BUST
OF THE RT. HON. JESSE COLLINGS, M-T- (MARB D albert toft