Edward Onslow Ford

Sir W.Q. Orchardson, R.A.

exhibited 1895

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Not on display

Artist: Edward Onslow Ford 1852–1901
Medium: Bronze on marble base
Dimensions: Object: 622 × 305 × 229 mm, 28 kg
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Presented by the Orchardson Memorial Committee 1914
Reference: N02971

Display caption

Onslow Ford exhibited this head at the Royal Academy in 1895, the year in which he was elected a full Academician. It shows the Scottish painter Orchardson, who was a generation older than Ford and had been an RA since 1877.

Ford made many portraits of British and French artists, and this year also exhibited heads of the painters Briton Riviere and Matthew Ridley Corbet at the RA. He often worked in terracotta, and the fine detail in heads such as this one records his precise cutting of the original clay model. The signature of Orchardson was written into wax and added to the base before casting.

Gallery label, August 2004

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Catalogue entry

N02971 SIR W. Q. ORCHARDSON, R.A. c. 1895

Inscr. on base ‘W.Q. Orchardson R.A.’ and on left shoulder ‘E. Onslow Ford’.
Bronze, 24 1/2×12×9 (62×30·5×23), on marble base, 2 1/4×9×8 1/2 (6×23×22).
Presented by the Orchardson Memorial Committee 1914.
Exh: R.A., 1895 (1643).
Lit: M. H. Spielmann, British Sculpture and Sculptors of To-day, 1901, p.54.
Repr: Royal Academy Pictures, 1895, p.91.

Sir William Quiller Orchardson (1832–1910), painter, is represented in the Gallery by seven works. According to the entry on him in the Dictionary of National Biography N02971 is a late cast of the original bust, which belonged to Mrs Joseph.

Published in:
Mary Chamot, Dennis Farr and Martin Butlin, The Modern British Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, London 1964, I