FRANCIS DERWENT-WOOD (1871-1926)

Francis Derwent-Wood (d.1926) was born in Cumbria and educated in Switzerland and Germany, studying sculpture at Karlsruhe. Returning to Britain in 1889, he entered the Royal College of Arts under the tutelage of Lanteri, worked with Thomas Brock and assisted Alphonse Legros at the Slade School of Art. In 1897 Wood was appointed modelling master at the Glasgow School of Art and two years later won a competition for decorative sculpture at the Glasgow Art Gallery. His work consists of architectural, memorial and ideal sculpture, his best-known piece being being the monument to the Machine Gun Corps at Hyde Park Corner. (See Jeremy Cooper, Nineteenth Century Romantic Bronzes; French, English and American Bronzes 1830-1915, p. 17 for a similar example illustrated.)