Sir William Goscombe John was a prolific Welsh sculptor known for his many public memorials.
Biography
He was born in the Canton area of Cardiff, and as a youth assisted his father, Thomas John, a wood carver, in the restoration of Cardiff Castle. He initially studied in his home town, attending the Cardiff School of Art. He went to London in 1882 and studied at the South London School of Technical Art under Jules Dalou and William Silver Frith and afterward at the Royal Academy schools, where he won the gold medal and a travelling scholarship in 1887. In 1890–91 he studied in Paris with Auguste Rodin. He married the Swiss-born Marthe Weiss. Their daughter Muriel married Frederick Luke Val Fildes, the son of the artist Sir Luke Fildes. As a young man he adopted the first name Goscombe, taken from the name of a village in Gloucestershire near his mother's home. Goscombe John returned to Paris in 1892 to show a statuette, Morpheus at the Paris Salon. John embraced the vigous naturalistic style of the New Sculpture movement and cemented his reputation with works such as John the Baptist for Lord Bute and with a number of life-sized figures including The Elf and Boy at Play. By the early 1890s John had established himself as a sculptor of some note and began to receive significant public commissions. Although based in London, John won a number of large commissions in his native Wales. These included his 1916 marble St David Blessing the People and ten other figures for Cardiff City Hall. Goscombe John was commissioned to design many public monuments and statues of public figures such as the shipping magnate and philanthropist John Cory; John's statue of the latter was erected in front of Cardiff City Hall. In 1921 he designed the memorial at Port Sunlight to the employees of Lever Brothers Ltd who had died in the First World War; he also sculpted portraits of Lord and Lady Lever. He received a gold medal in Paris in 1901, was made a Royal Academician in 1909, was knighted in 1911, and became corresponding member of the French Institute. He settled in Greville Road, Kilburn, London, and is buried in Hampstead Cemetery. The memorial statue of his wife, which he designed when she died in 1923, was stolen from the cemetery in 2001 but recovered after a few months; it was put into secure storage, but was again stolen in early 2007.
Merlin and Arthur in the collection of the Amgueddfa Cymru Caerdydd, National Museum of Wales, Cardiff, Accession number: NMW A 127. This bronze was exhibited at The Royal Academy in 1902. The Museum also holds many other works by Goscombe John.
Memorial Relief to the late Canon Guy D.D, in Llandaff Cathedral.
