1860 - 1928

Sculptor. He was born in London, began his professional career in an architects’ office, but went on to train at the South London Technical Art School (1880--1), and at the Royal Academy Schools (1881--7). The next two years were spent in Paris, where he studied with Antonin Mercié. On his return to London he developed his own distinctive version of the symbolist style, which combines dreamlike and suggestive qualities with a draughtsmanly perfection seemingly derived from the English tradition of Flaxman. His symbolism was most spectacularly embodied in the poetic busts, Mysteriarch (painted plaster) of 1892, now in the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool and the Lamia (ivory, bronze and opals) of 1900, in the collection of the Royal Academy. During the 1890s, Frampton wrote articles on woodwork, enamelling and polychromy, and he made a distinctive contribution to the movement for the integration of sculpture and architecture, contributing work to buildings by T.E. Collcutt, _J. Belcher, Aston Webb and J.W. Simpson. Frampton’s 1897 statue of Queen Victoria for Calcutta launched his career as a public statuary. _It was followed by several commissions for Liverpool, including those to William Rathbone (1899--1900) and Canon T. Major Lester (1904--7), both in St John’s Gardens. In London, his public statues include the small and atmospheric Peter Pan Memorial in Kensington Gardens (1912--15) and the towering national memorial to Edith Cavell in St Martin’s Place (1920). Frampton was Master of the Art Workers’ Guild in 1902. He was knighted in 1908, and in 1911--12 served as President of the Royal Society of British Sculptors. As an eminence grise of the sculpture world, during and after the First World War, his influence was often crucial in the selection of sculptors as war artists and as creators of war memorials.