John Graham Lough

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John Graham Lough (1798-1876), in His Studio, Artist: Ralph Hedley 1881
John Graham Lough (1798-1876), in His Studio, Artist: Ralph Hedley 1881

John Graham Lough (1789-1876) was an English sculptor known for his funerary monuments and a variety of portrait sculpture. He also produced ideal classical male and female figures.

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[edit] Life

He was born at Black Hedley Hall near Consett, County Durham, and may have worked as a farmer in his youth. He was later apprenticed to a stone mason, at Shotley Field near Newcastle upon Tyne.

Lough came to London by sea in 1824 to study the Elgin Marbles at the British Museum.

He took lodgings in a first floor in Burleigh Street, above a greengrocer's shop, and there commenced to mould his colossal statue of Milo based on his studies of the Elgin marbles and the work of Michelangelo. He became the protégé of the painter Benjamin Haydon, and in 1827 he exhibited the statue (A later 1863 bronze version survives at Blagdon, Northumberland). It so impressed London society that it brought him scores of patrons and established his career.

He began exhibiting ideal figures and heads at the Royal Academy from 1826.

Between 1834-38, he spent a period in Rome where his portrait style was influenced by Neo-classicism.

He was a close friend of the surgeon Campbell De Morgan who sat with Lough as he lay dying of pneumonia. A bust of De Morgan by Lough was given to the Middlesex Hospital medical school and is on display there.

He is buried in Kensal Green cemetery, London.

[edit] Works

Lough's public works include a statue of Lord Collingwood in Tynemouth, and the bronze George Stephenson memorial of 1863, near the High Level Bridge, Newcastle upon Tyne.

In London, he produced the monuments to Henry Montgomery Lawrence and to Bishop Middleton in St Paul's Cathedral, and made the Queen Victoria and Prince Albert for the Royal Exchange. In Canterbury Cathedral, he was responsible for the monuments to Bishop Broughton, and to Lt Col Frederick Mackeson.

Lough produced many ideal works on classical, historical and literary themes, including a series of marble statues of Shakespearean subjects for his chief patron Matthew, 4th Baronet Ridley.

[edit] Bibliography

  • John Lough (Author), Elizabeth Merson (Contributor), John Graham Lough, 1798-1876: A Northumbrian Sculptor Boydell & Brewer Inc (1987) ISBN 0851154808

[edit] References