Lectures on Sculpture to Students of the Royal Academy Schools, c. 1877, by Thomas Woolner RA (1825–92)

The sculptor and poet Thomas Woolner (1825–92) was a founder member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (1848) and a successful Victorian sculptor who specialised in ideal and portrait sculpture. In 1877, he was invited to take up the Professorship of Sculpture at the Royal Academy and deliver a series of six annual lectures. Woolner’s Lectures offer a vital new source on Victorian sculpture. Written by a leading practitioner, their combination of conceptual and practical instruction offers significant insights into the making of Victorian portrait sculpture and its intended effects on the viewer. Six notebooks survive, setting out the structure and content of at least five lectures. They are unusual in their focus on portraiture, one of the most popular and debated forms of sculpture in the Victorian period. They are also indicative of the moment Woolner was working in: his interests span biography, heroism, realism, truth to nature, phrenology, race, class, antique and modern subjects and sources, colour theory, painting, and costume. The Lectures are here transcribed and published for the first time, including annotations that identify artworks, individuals, texts, and concepts to which Woolner refers, accompanied by headings and relevant illustrations and sources.