1867 - 1921

Sculptor. Born in Paris, he studied under W.S.Frith at the Lambeth School and under J.E. Boehm and H.H.Armstead at the Royal Academy Schools, which he entered in 1889, the same year in which a work by him was first exhibited at the Royal Academy. He then spent time in Paris, on his return attracting attention with a drinking fountain (1896) for Hyde Park, a naked female half- length figure presenting a bowl, in a style which reflects the influence of French art nouveau. Colton also produced coloured decorative plasterwork in this style for interiors, and was reputed to have been the first to reintroduce artistic enamels into England. The mildly erotic quality of his drinking fountain was found again in The Girdle, exhibited at the Royal Academy in various materials in 1898, 1899 and 1907 (bronze, Tate Britain, London). The Image Finder, exhibited at the RA in 1899, representing an Indian hauling an ancient sculpture from the ground, was found by the critic Marion Spielmann to be “ a work of more originality and strength”. The same critic detected the influence of Auguste Rodin in Colton’s The Crown of Love (1900). In later ideal figures and groups, Colton’s sentimental and sensual style recalls the Paris Salon more than the English “New Sculpture”, with which some of his earlier work had seemed to identify him. In the first decade of the 20th century, Colton began to receive commissions for public monuments. His statue of the Maharajah of Mysore for India, was exhibited at the RA in 1907. There followed a statue of Edward VII for King’s Lynn, Norfolk (1908), and the Royal Artillery South African War Memorial for the Mall, London (1905-10). The central group from the latter was re-used as a World War I memorial for Stafford (1922, Victoria Park, Stafford). For the remainder of his life Colton seems to have worked on more modestly scaled memorials and portrait busts. He was professor of sculpture at the Royal Academy (1907-10) and was elected full RA in 1919. He was a member of the Art Workers Guild from 1894.