James Woodford - Biography

1893-1976. Born in Nottingham, son of a lace designer, Woodford studied at the Nottingham School of Art before enlisting during the First World War. After the war he resumed his art training at the Royal College of Art, where he was awarded the Prix de Rome for Sculpture. He began to exhibit at the Royal Academy in 1926. Woodford’s sculpture is distinguished by a high degree of stylisation in the treatment of the figure, and a preoccupation with decorative silhouette. During the 1930s he sculpted impressive bronze doors for the Liverpool Royal School for the Blind (1931) and for Norwich City Offices (1938). For his more intimate works, he returned throughout his career to wood, most frequently oak. After the Second World War, he was commissioned to carve the War Memorial of the British Medical Association (1951--4) for its headquarters in Tavistock Square, London. This consists of four separate free-standing allegorical figures. At the same time Woodford produced for his home town of Nottingham the Robin Hood Memorial (1952), an unusual arrangement of free-standing figures and reliefs in bronze, on a terrace below the outer walls of the castle. The memorial was installed to mark a visit by Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip to Nottingham. For the Queen’s coronation in 1953, Woodford modelled a series of Queen’s Beasts for Westminster Abbey. These were later carved in stone and are now placed in Kew Gardens. Woodford was awarded the OBE in 1953. Source: D. Buckman, The Dictionary of British Artists Since 1945, Bristol, 1998. [CL2003]

The works of James Woodford: