page_title: John Webb Singer
section_title: Monumental works
hierarchical_section_title: John Webb Singer / Monumental works
caption_attribution_description: Statue of General Gordon, seated on a camel, at Khartoum Iconographic Collections Keywords: Gordon
context_page_description: John Webb Singer was an English businessman who created a substantial art foundry in Frome, Somerset, known for its statuary and ecclesiastical products. He had assembled immense collections of antique jewellery, rings, wine glasses, snuffboxes, stamps. He took a prominent part in both local and national politics, serving on the Local Board and its successor the Urban District Council, founding the Frome Art School and helping to create the Frome Literary and Scientific Institution. He worked with the leading bronze sculptors of his day.
  Note: A number of misapprehensions as to Singer's statuary output exist both in books and on the web. The following works have no connection with Singer's art foundry in Frome: Eros in Piccadilly Circus, the lions in Trafalgar Square or Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens.
context_section_description: In 1888 Singer was invited to attend a meeting of leading sculptors, including Hamo Thornycroft, Onslow Ford and Thomas Brock, who were concerned about the quality of work of British foundries compared with those of France or Belgium. He told them he had recently added a new statue area to his existing works. He was capable of creating large sand castings. Critically he could offer the 'lost wax' or cire perdue method of casting which was needed for detail - a method then almost unknown in England - which he had learned from the continent and from the craftsmen he had brought to Frome. This method of reproduction allowed for fine delineation of faces and hands as well as feature work. Almost immediately his order book expanded.
  Thornycroft asked Singer to cast a panel for a statue of General Gordon destined for Melbourne.  This was exported in March 1889.  Singer then cast a large equestrian statue by Hems of William III for the Clifton Street Orange Hall in Belfast. Even taller was a statue of General Gordon on a camel, an ambitious project which necessitated raising the roof of the workshop. Thereafter it was known as the 'Camel Shed'.  Onslow Ford created the plaster form; it had highly complex elements: a refined face, ornamented jacket, a rattan cane, intricate saddlebag tassels and the camel's harness, all requiring the 'lost wax' method. It stands at the Royal Engineers Barracks at Chatham Dockyard.  A copy by another bronze founder once stood in Khartoum; shortly after Sudan achieved its independence, the statue was removed and reinstalled at Gordon's School, near Woking in 1959.
  "The Sluggard" by Frederic Leighton became very important for Singer.  A life-sized bronze, also known as "Athlete awakening from sleeping", was first exhibited in 1886 at the Royal Academy. From 1890 Singer produced reduced-scale versions in bronze, organised by Arthur Collie, one of the first people to sell reductions of large works.  It became one of the most reproduced statuettes of the time; it was still in the Singer trade catalogue of 1914.
  Brock's statue of Richard Owen (1895) still occupies a space in the Natural History Museum that Owen created; once in the Main Hall, it was moved in 2009 to accommodate one of Darwin, his scientific rival.
  Another major statue was that of "Cromwell", again by Thornycroft, placed outside the Palace of Parliament.  Singer delivered the statue on time in 1898, but the then Prime Minister, Lord Roseberry delayed the unveiling till the following year, concerned about demonstrations.  Instead, it proved to be exceptionally popular.  In the same year Alfred Drury's controversial eight Leeds nymphs were installed.  Then Thornycroft's massive statue of "King Alfred" was unveiled in Winchester for the millennial commemoration of his death, 17 foot high from the base to the top of his arm.
  "Boadicea and her Daughters", Singer's most well-known piece has a complex history. The project was begun back in 1850 by Thornycroft's father, Thomas.  By 1870 it was largely complete, special attention being paid to the outlines, avoiding drapery that would confuse the outline at a distance.  Both Hamo Thornycroft and his mother, Mary also worked on it. His father died in 1885.  When the London County Council decided to open the supposed tumulus of her burial on Parliament Hill in 1894, Thornycroft proposed that a statue be erected on the site, submitting his father's plaster model as evidence:
  "I should like to point out that the group is not only a monument to Boadicea, but also to 'British pluck', which in this group is shown with so much force as to appeal at once to all who examine it.....My father's group has a tale to tell to men unborn....".
  At first Thornycroft contributed £100 to the estimated cost of £6000.  In the end he paid £2000 for the whole casting by Singer.  When the Society of Antiquaries rejected the tumulus as Boadicea's burial place, a new site was proposed on the Embankment, on the south-west end of Westminster Bridge where the statue stands today, after the final assembly on site in 1902.
  The 
caption: Onslow Ford's statue of General Gordon seated on a camel
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