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Thomas Woolner

 
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Thomas Woolner (17 December 1825 – 7 October 1892) was an English sculptor
Sculpture

Sculpture is Three-dimensional space artwork created by shaping or combining hard and or plastic material, sound, and or text and or light, commonly Stone sculpture , metal, glass, or wood....
 and poet.

Born in Hadleigh
Hadleigh

Hadleigh is an ancient market town in Suffolk, East Anglia, England. Guthrum, King of the Danes, is said to be buried in the grounds of St. Mary Church in the town....
, Suffolk
Suffolk

Suffolk is a Non-metropolitan counties of England of Historic counties of England in East Anglia, England. It has borders with Norfolk to the north, Cambridgeshire to the west and Essex to the south....
 he was a founder-member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a group of England Paintings, poets, and critics, founded in 1848 by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Michael Rossetti, James Collinson, John Everett Millais, Frederic George Stephens, Thomas Woolner and William Holman Hunt....
. Woolner trained with the sculptor William Behnes
William Behnes

William Behnes was an England sculpture of the early 19th century.Born in London, Behnes was the son of a Hanoverian pianoforte-maker and his English wife....
, exhibiting work at the Royal Academy
Royal Academy

The Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly, London, England. As an academy, it functions to encourage British art, and has a membership of practising artists....
 from 1843.

Woolner's classic
Classic

Classic may refer to:...
al inclinations were rather difficult to reconcile with Pre-Raphaelite Medievalism, but his belief in close observation of nature was consistent with their aims.

Woolner's sculptures immediately after the foundation of the Brotherhood in 1848 display close attention to detail.






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Stamford Raffles Statue
Thomas Woolner (17 December 1825 – 7 October 1892) was an English sculptor
Sculpture

Sculpture is Three-dimensional space artwork created by shaping or combining hard and or plastic material, sound, and or text and or light, commonly Stone sculpture , metal, glass, or wood....
 and poet.

Born in Hadleigh
Hadleigh

Hadleigh is an ancient market town in Suffolk, East Anglia, England. Guthrum, King of the Danes, is said to be buried in the grounds of St. Mary Church in the town....
, Suffolk
Suffolk

Suffolk is a Non-metropolitan counties of England of Historic counties of England in East Anglia, England. It has borders with Norfolk to the north, Cambridgeshire to the west and Essex to the south....
 he was a founder-member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a group of England Paintings, poets, and critics, founded in 1848 by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Michael Rossetti, James Collinson, John Everett Millais, Frederic George Stephens, Thomas Woolner and William Holman Hunt....
. Woolner trained with the sculptor William Behnes
William Behnes

William Behnes was an England sculpture of the early 19th century.Born in London, Behnes was the son of a Hanoverian pianoforte-maker and his English wife....
, exhibiting work at the Royal Academy
Royal Academy

The Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly, London, England. As an academy, it functions to encourage British art, and has a membership of practising artists....
 from 1843.

Woolner's classic
Classic

Classic may refer to:...
al inclinations were rather difficult to reconcile with Pre-Raphaelite Medievalism, but his belief in close observation of nature was consistent with their aims.

Woolner's sculptures immediately after the foundation of the Brotherhood in 1848 display close attention to detail. He made his name with forceful portrait busts and medallions, but was at first unable to make a living.

He was forced to emigrate to Australia
Australia

Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the southern hemisphere comprising the Australia of the world's smallest continent, the major island of Tasmania, and numerous list of islands of Australia in the Indian Ocean and Pacific Oceans....
 for a period, but eventually returned to Britain, soon establishing himself as both a sculptor and art-dealer. His visit to Australia nevertheless helped him to obtain commissions there and elsewhere for statues of British imperial heroes, such as Captain Cook and Sir Stamford Raffles.

However, his most personal and complex works in sculpture are probably Civilisation and Virgilia. These demonstrate his attempt to express the tension between the static stone and the dynamic desires of the figures represented emerging into solidity from it.

He was elected to the Royal Academy in 1875 and served as professor of sculpture
Sculpture

Sculpture is Three-dimensional space artwork created by shaping or combining hard and or plastic material, sound, and or text and or light, commonly Stone sculpture , metal, glass, or wood....
 from 1877 to 1879.

Woolner was also a poet of some reputation in his day. His early poem My Beautiful Lady is a Pre-Raphaelite work, emphasising intense unresolved moments of feeling. His later narrative works, Pygmalion, Silenus and Tiresius renounce Pre-Raphaelitism in favour of an often eroticised classicism.

Woolner was a close friend of Alfred Tennyson, providing him with the scenario for his poem Enoch Arden. His speculations about human anatomy also impressed Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin

Charles Robert Darwin Royal Society was an English people natural history who realised and presented compelling evidence that all species of life have evolution over time from common descent, through the process he called natural selection....
, who named part of the human ear the 'Woolnerian Tip
Darwin's tubercle

Darwin's tubercle is a congenital ear condition which often presents as a thickening on the helix at the junction of the upper and middle thirds....
' after a feature in Woolner's sculpture Puck.

Thomas Woolner died instantly from a stroke
Stroke

A stroke is the rapidly developing loss of brain function due to a disturbance in the blood supply to the brain. According to the National Stroke Association, a "stroke" occurs when a blood clot blocks and artery or a blood vessel breaks, interrupting blood flow to an area of the brain....
 at the age of 67. His wife Alice died in 1912. Their son, Hugh, traveled back to his home in New York from her funeral on the Titanic. He survived the sinking of the ship.

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