Albert Toft

British Relief Bronze Portrait of Sir Henry Irving by Albert Toft

1904

Professor Albert Toft, his cast of Maternity is known to us in only one other version, also in gilt bronze, in the Cyfarthfa Castle Museum and Art Gallery in Wales (acquired in 1943). Maternity closely relates to the high relief bronze of Charity on the pedestal of the monument to Queen Victoria erected in Nottingham in 1905, and they were probably conceived around the same time. The composition with a baby held on each arm and the arrangement of her robe and looped hair are almost identical save in the details. Maternity numbers amongst Toft's well received ideal works that included Fate-Led (1890) and The Spirit of Contemplation (1901). They show the confluence of the Lantéri-Dalou tradition which Toft learnt at the National Art Training School, with the symbolist overtones of Toft's friend Alfred Gilbert. Londoner's will identify Toft as the author of the iconic Royal Fusiliers Monument in the City and art students with his enduring book Modelling and Sculpture (1911). Albert Toft was born in Handsworth, then in Staffordshire, and now a suburb of Birmingham. His parents were Charles Toft (1832–1909) and Rosanna Reeves. His father was a modeller at the Wedgwood pottery. Toft trained at Wedgwood's pottery, and attended art schools in Hanley and Newcastle upon Tyne. In 1881 he won a scholarship to study sculpture at the South Kensington Schools under Professor Édouard Lantéri. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography describes Toft as one of the major figures of "New Sculpture" following on from William Hamo Thornycroft and George Frampton. Toft described his work as 'Idealist' but he also said of himself that "to become an idealist you must necessarily first be a realist." From 1885 onwards Toft exhibited at the Royal Academy and some of his most notable works exhibited at the Royal Academy included Fate-Led (1890, now at Walker Art Gallery), The Sere and Yellow Leaf (1892), Spring (1897, now at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery), The Spirit of Contemplation (1901; Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle) and The Metal Pourer (1915). In 1915 his sculpture The Bather was purchased using the Royal Academy's Chantrey Fund. He created monuments to Queen Victoria for Leamington Spa, Nottingham, and South Shields, and to Edward VII in Birmingham and Warwick. He designed the coronation medal of George V and Queen Mary (1911) and a statuette of W. S. Penley playing Charley's Aunt for Royal Doulton (1913). He also published a book, Modelling and Sculpture in 1911, which was reprinted in 1949. He made a series of war memorials, starting with the South African War Memorial in Cardiff (1910), and then many after the First World War, including the Royal Fusiliers War Memorial in London (1922), and four statues for the Birmingham Hall of Memory (1923–24). In 1891 Toft was elected to the Art Workers Guild and in 1938 he was elected a fellow to the Royal Society of British Sculptors. He died in Worthing.