1867 - 1940

Sculptor. Born at Forest Hill, London, he was recommended to the Royal Academy Schools in 1885 by the sculptor Horace Montford, for whom it is supposed he may previously have worked. After failing to win the Gold Medal in 1889 he went to work in the studio of Thomas Brock, and while there produced the dramatic group, Perseus Rescuing Andromeda (1893-4, Tate Britain, London). Four years later he followed this up with a St George and the Rescued Maiden. Both works were heavily influenced by Alfred Gilbert. Despite such ambitious imaginary works and a number of portrait busts, architectural sculpture predominates in Fehr’s œuvre. He collaborated with the architects Lanchester and Rickards (Deptford Town Hall, Cardiff City Hall and Methodist Central Hall, London, 1905-11), C. Fitzroy Doll (Hotel Russell, Russell Square, London, 1898) and J.S. Gibson (Walsall Municipal Buildings and Middlesex Guildhall, London, 1912-13). A penchant for historical pageantry as evinced in the Middlesex Guildhall frieze, is also to be found in a relief in coloured plaster, illustrating events from the Wars of the Roses, in the West Riding County Offices, Wakefield (1898), and in the statues of James Watt and John Harrison for City Square, Leeds.