Thomas Stirling Lee

Thomas Stirling Lee
Born(1857-03-16)16 March 1857
Lambeth, London, England
Died29 June 1916(1916-06-29) (aged 59)
St George's Hospital, Knightsbridge, London, England
Education
Known forSculpture
Elected

Thomas Stirling Lee (London, 16 March 1857 – 29 June 1916, London) was an English sculptor, specialising in reliefs and portrait heads.[1]

Early life

Lee was born in Lambeth, London on 16 March 1857, the son of John Swanwick Lee, a surveyor.[2] He was educated at Westminster School and then served as an apprentice in the studio of John Birnie Philip.[2][3]

Lee studied at the Royal Academy Schools from 1876 to 1880, where he won both a Gold Medal and a Travelling Scholarship.[1] In 1880–1881 he studied under Pierre-Jules Cavelier at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and then studied in Rome until 1883.[1]

Career

Stirling Lee's commission for 28 panels for the exterior of St George's Hall, Liverpool, resulting from an open competition held by Liverpool City Council in 1882,[2] is regarded as his most important,[2] but it was the subject of controversy,[2] when the first two featured naked girls,[2] depicting "the child Justice" and "the girl Justice".[3] Lee only completed six of the 28 panels, but was subsequently commissioned to make two, and oversee all, of a further set of six on the theme of 'National Prosperity'.[2]

Stirling Lee cast a number of bronze portrait reliefs (medallions) of friends and personalities.[4] Examples are to be seen, e.g., in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge,[5] the Victoria and Albert Museum, London,[6] and in private collections.[7]

Mabel Bent, a bronze portrait relief (c. 25 cm, 2 kg) by Thomas Stirling Lee, dated 1895 (Bent Archive collection)

He was a member of the National Portrait Society from 1910 to 1915,[1] building a studio in Chelsea, London.[8] He was a member and twice chairman of the Chelsea Arts Club[2][9] and a member of the International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers.[10] Stirling Lee was an active member of the Art Workers' Guild and was elected Master in 1898.[9][11][12]

The reverse face of the stone cross from Thomas Stirling Lee’s 1911 monument to Henry Sadler in New Southgate Cemetery (Sector L), London, showing Lee’s carving of the ‘Triple Tau’ symbol (2026).

Lee was an active Freemason: “A new lodge, for the convenience of professors of the arts of sculpture and painting, was consecrated on Tuesday [13 June 1899], at Freemasons’ Hall, London… The lodge is numbered 2751 on the roll of Grand Lodge of England.” Lee was appointed one of the officers.[13] He is credited with designing masonic jewels, i.e. for Public Schools Chapter No. 2233 and a Past Masters Jewel for Rosemary Lodge No. 2851.[14] He also designed and carved the memorial for fellow mason Henry Sadler (d. 1911), in New Southgate Cemetery, London. It was commissioned by the Grand Lodge, for whom Sadler was archivist/librarian. The monument was in the form of a cross on a pillar resting on an inscribed base. The total height was c. 2.2 m in a rectangular plot. It has since collapsed and the cross piece is face down, awaiting restoration. What we see today on the reverse face is Lee's carving of the Triple Tau symbol, the grand emblem of Royal Arch Masonry.

Death and burial

The family grave in the New Southgate Cemetery, Brunswick Park Rd, London, in which Thomas Stirling Lee was buried in July 1916.

Falling unconscious in the arcade at South Kensington Station,[15] Stirling Lee died at St George's Hospital, Knightsbridge, London[2] on 29 June 1916.[16] He is buried in a family plot (99, Sector K; 51.62370290623633, -0.1447617412141977) in the New Southgate Cemetery, Brunswick Park Rd, London. The plot was granted to his father, John Swanwick Lee, in 1865, to hold six coffins, for which the latter paid seven guineas. Stirling Lee was buried there on Tuesday, 4 July 1916. The plot is somewhat dilapidated (August 2026) and the heads of two small figures on the sides of the headstone are missing; no inscriptions are visible apart from a few words. Apparently his friends subscribed to a fund for a bronze panel on the vault, but this has not been traced (August 2026).[2]

Works

Statue of Charles Gore

Lee's work includes:

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Thomas Stirling Lee". Tate. Retrieved 31 May 2013.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 "Thomas Stirling Lee". Mapping the Practice and Profession of Sculpture in Britain and Ireland 1851–1951. Glasgow University. Retrieved 31 May 2013.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 "Thomas Stirling Lee". The Victorian Web. 12 April 2013. Retrieved 31 May 2013.
  4. ↑ Thomas Stirling Lee, in Mapping the Practice and Profession of Sculpture in Britain and Ireland 1851–1951. Glasgow University. Retrieved 14 June 2024.
  5. ↑ The Fitzwilliam Museum Syndicate's Annual Report and list of Accessions made during the period 1 August 2006 - 31 July 2007, Cambridge, 2008, p.18.
  6. ↑ https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O311771/mrs-rodney-fennessy-portrait-medallion-stirling-lee-thomas/ (accessed 14/06/2024).
  7. ↑ Kineton Parks, Sculpture of To-day (1921, New York, p.112).
  8. ↑ "Settlement and building: Artists and Chelsea Pages 102-106 A History of the County of Middlesex: Volume 12, Chelsea". British History Online. Victoria County History, 2004. Retrieved 21 December 2022.
  9. 1 2 "Thomas Stirling Lee". Mapping the Practice and Profession of Sculpture in Britain and Ireland 1851–1951, University of Glasgow. Retrieved 19 October 2021.
  10. ↑ "The International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers". Mapping the Practice and Profession of Sculpture in Britain and Ireland 1851–1951. Glasgow University. Retrieved 31 May 2013.
  11. ↑ See “Thomas Stirling Lee, the first Chairman” by Geoffrey Matthews, in Chelsea Arts Club Yearbook 2022, for an informative article, including Philip Wilson Steer’s ebullient portrait of TSL, now displayed in Chelsea Arts Club.
  12. ↑ For a bronze bust of Stirling Lee by Arthur George Walker (1898). Retrieved 28 May 2024.
  13. ↑ The Freemason’s Chronicle, 17 June 1899, pp. 287-9.
  14. ↑ M. Cherry (2020), 'Freemasonry and the Art Workers’ Guild: The Arts Lodge No. 2751, 1899–1935', in R. Wolf and A. Luxenberg (eds) Freemasonry and the Visual Arts from the Eighteenth Century Forward: Historical and Global Perspectives: pp. 203-226. Bloomsbury: London.
  15. ↑ The Building News, No.3209, 5 July 1916, p.21.
  16. ↑ Waters, Grant M. (1974). Dictionary of British Artists Working 1900–1950. Eastbourne: Eastbourne Fine Art.
  17. ↑ Noszlopy, George T. (1998). Public Sculpture of Birmingham including Sutton Coldfield. Public Sculpture of Britain. Vol. 2. Liverpool University Press. ISBN 0-85323-682-8.
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