Charles L. Hartwell - Biography

(1873--1951). Trained at the City and Guilds School under W.S. Frith, and at the Royal Academy from 1896. He also studied privately with Edward Onslow Ford and W.H. Thornycroft. He exhibited at the Royal Academy between 1900 and 1950. His Dawn (marble, c.1909--14, Tate Britain, London) is a languidly sensual poetic figure in the manner of French Salon sculptors of the turn of the century. Hartwell’s humorously entitled A Foul in the Giants’ Race (bronze, 1908, Tate Britain, London), a group of elephants and their riders, is animalier sculpture inspired by life in India. During both World Wars, Hartwell exhibited works with war-related subjects, such as Blighty (1916), Tommy (1918) and An Ally (1945). In 1923, Earl Haig unveiled Hartwell’s First World War Memorial for Newcastle-upon-Tyne, a dynamic equestrian group of St George and the Dragon on a tall stone plinth. A version of this group was later used for the Marylebone War Memorial, in front of St John’s Wood Church in London. Hartwell was elected RA in 1924, and presented as his diploma work a poetic and slightly androgynous head in marble entitled The Oracle. In 1929, he won the Royal Society of British Sculptors’ Silver Medal for a work which displayed his appreciation of beautiful girls as well as his skills as an animal sculptor, the Goatherd’s Daughter (bronze, Courtauld Institute of Art, Somerset House, London). Portraiture, in the form of busts, is a predominant feature of Hartwell’s oeuvre. Sources: J. Christian (ed.), The Last Romantics, London, 1990; P. Usherwood, J. Beach and C. Morris, Public Sculpture of North-East England, Liverpool, 2000.

The works of Charles L. Hartwell: