Thomas J Clapperton


Thomas J Clapperton FRBS was a Scottish sculptor, famous for the statue of Robert the Bruce at the entrance of Edinburgh Castle erected in 1929.

Life

He was born on 14 October 1879 in Galashiels, Selkirkshire in the Scottish Borders the son of a photographer.
He studied at the Galashiels Mechanics Institute, then Glasgow School of Art from 1899 to 1901, then the Kennington School of Art in London and then the Royal Academy Schools in 1904-5. In the latter he was student assistant to Sir William Goscombe John. After further studies in Paris and Rome, he set up studios at Chelsea and St John's Wood, London, as a sculptor.
Although commissioned to design a monument to Mungo Park in Selkirk this was ultimately executed by the more experienced Andrew Currie. In the First World War he served in India.
Unlike the large group war memorials of Sir William Goscombe John, under whom Clapperton had studied at the Royal Academy, Clapperton's works are often of individual or equestrian figures.
In collaboration with C L J Doman, he produced in 1926 the large frieze representing Britannia with the Wealth of East and West on the front of Liberty's department store, Regent Street, London. His work overseas includes a war memorial in New Zealand, a sculpture in Canada and a fountain in California.
In 1926 a bronze sculpture was commissioned by the mayor of Oamaru, Robert Milligan, to adorn the famous Oamaru Botanical Gardens. It was unveiled on 7 March 1927. Milligan was inspired by Sir George Frampton's 1913 Peter Pan sculpture in London's Kensington Gardens and wanted a similar sculpture for Oamaru. Milligan was referred to Thomas Clapperton since he had been a pupil of Frampton's. The sculpture is entitled 'Wonderland Statue' and was gifted by the mayor to Oamaru. The work appears more ornate and intricate than the Peter Pan sculpture. It is reported that Harold Richmond so loved Clapperton's Wonderland Statue in the Oamaru Gardens as a child, that later as an adult he gifted two statues to the Dunedin Botanical Gardens. One statue is of Peter Pan, and the other is of Wendy and her brothers.
Thomas Clapperton died in Upper Beeding in Sussex in 1962.

Honours and awards

Clapperton was elected a Fellow of the Royal British Society of Sculptors in 1938.

Works

see