William Brodie (sculptor)

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"Hercules", a bronze statue by William Brodie, in Portmeirion

William Brodie (1815 - 1881) was a Scottish sculptor. He was the son of John Brodie, a Banff shipmaster, and elder brother of Alexander Brodie (1830 - 1867), another sculptor.

He was elected Associate of the Royal Scottish Academy (RSA) in 1857, and Royal Academician in 1859 . In 1876, and until his death, he was appointed Secretary of the RSA.

When he was about six years old, his family moved to Aberdeen. William Brodie was later apprenticed to a plumber, but in his spare time studied at the Mechanic's Institute, where he amused himself by casting lead figures of well-known people. He soon began to model small medallion portraits which attracted the attention of a Mr. John Hill Burton. It was Burton who encouraged him to go to Edinburgh in 1847. Here Brodie studied for four years at the Trustees' School of Design, learning to model on a larer scale, and also executing a bust of one of his earliest patrons, Lord Jeffrey. About 1853 he went to Rome, where he tudied under Laurence Macdonald (q.v.), and it was with the latter's assistance that he modelled "Corinna, the Lyric Muse", a work which Copland reproduced in miniature in "Parian" four years later. In 1875 he made the group of "A Peer and His Lady Doing Homage" for the Prince Consort Memorial in Edenburgh. Brodie exhibited at the Royal Academy, 1850-1881, and at the Royal Scottish Academy, 1847-1881; at the Great Exhibition of 1851 he showed a group of "Little Nell and Her Grandfather". Het died 30 October, 1881.(Various references, Art Journal; The Times, 1 November, 1881. Source of this text: Dictionary of British Sculptors 1660-1851 by Rupert Gunnis).