1863 - 1931

Sculptor. Born in Melbourne, Australia, the son of a Scottish architectural sculptor. He studied with his father and at the School of Design of the National Gallery of Victoria Schools in Melbourne, coming to London in 1882. He briefly attended the Royal Academy Schools, before going on to Rome, and then to Paris, where he took a studio and learned by observing various sculptors at work, including Auguste Rodin. On his return to England in 1886 he took up an appointment as head of the modelling and design department of the Coalport Potteries in Shropshire. In 1888 he returned to Australia to execute sculptures on Parliament House, Melbourne. By 1892 he was back in Paris, where, in the following year, he exhibited his Circe at the Paris Salon. This received a mention honorable. When he entered this glamorous femme fatale at the Royal Academy in London in 1894, it was required by the hanging committee that her base, decorated with writhing nude figures, be covered with a discreet drape. From 1894 Mackennal remained in London, producing ideal works and architectural sculpture, but also increasingly involved with public monuments, starting with statues of Queen Victoria for Lahore, Blackburn and Ballarat. Mackennal also later produced several statues of Edward VII, including London’s memorial to the King in Waterloo Place (1921). He executed Edward’s tomb in St George’s Chapel, Windsor, but by far his most impressive funerary monument is the one to Lord and Lady Curzon (1907-13), in Kedleston Church, Derbyshire. London can boast several fine examples of Mackennal’s skills as an architectural sculptor, his last effort of this kind being the colossal bronze group of Phoebus Driving the Horses of the Sun (1924), crowning Australia House on the Strand at Aldwych. Mackennal produced a number of war memorials and designed the George V coinage. He was knighted in 1921, and elected RA in the following year.