26 Facts About Thomas Woolner

Thomas Woolner was an English sculptor and poet who was one of the founder-members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

Thomas Woolner was the only sculptor among the original members.

Thomas Woolner returned to Britain to have a successful career as a sculptor, creating many important public works as well as memorials, tomb sculptures and narrative reliefs.

Thomas Woolner corresponded with many notable men of the day and had some success as a poet and as an art dealer.

Thomas Woolner became friendly with Dante Gabriel Rossetti and was invited by him to join the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

Thomas Woolner was active in the early history of the group, emphasising the need for a more vivid form of realism in sculpture.

Thomas Woolner made his name with forceful portrait busts and medallions, but was at first unable to make a living.

Thomas Woolner was forced to emigrate to Australia in 1852, but after a year he returned to Britain, soon establishing himself as both a sculptor and art-dealer.

Thomas Woolner's visit to Australia nevertheless helped him to obtain commissions there and elsewhere for statues of British imperial heroes, such as Captain Cook and Sir Stamford Raffles.

Henry Adams refers to them in The Education of Henry Adams, noting that Thomas Woolner had a "rough" personality and had to make "a supernatural effort" to be polite.

Thomas Woolner designed the frontispiece of a piping youth for Palgrave's famous verse anthology the Golden Treasury.

Thomas Woolner's largest single commission was a programme of architectural sculptures for the Manchester Assize Courts, built in Manchester from 1859 through 1864.

Thomas Woolner created a large number of statues depicting lawgivers and rulers which formed part of the building's structure.

Thomas Woolner made his living mainly from creating statues of famous men, but his most personal and complex works in sculpture were what he called "ideal" groups, notably Civilization and Virgilia bewailing the absence of Coriolanus.

Thomas Woolner made a large number of relief sculptures for memorials.

Thomas Woolner's reliefs depicting scenes from the Iliad were widely reproduced.

Thomas Woolner was elected to the Royal Academy in 1875 and served as professor of sculpture from 1877 to 1879.

Thomas Woolner initially been in love with her sister, Fanny, and had previously proposed to her, but she turned him down.

In 1874, while in Italy, Hunt married their third sister Edith, an act which Thomas Woolner considered immoral and which was defined as incest under British laws at the time.

Hunt's granddaughter Diana Holman-Hunt later claimed that before his marriage Thomas Woolner had been involved in a relationship with a lower-class girl called Amelia Henderson, who appealed to Hunt for support.

Thomas Woolner's early poem My Beautiful Lady is a Pre-Raphaelite work, emphasising intense unresolved moments of feeling.

Thomas Woolner later expanded it into a full-length work modelled on Tennyson's narrative poetry.

Thomas Woolner provided the latter with the scenario for his poem "Enoch Arden".

Thomas Woolner corresponded with Charles Darwin, who named part of the human ear the 'Woolnerian Tip' after a feature in Woolner's sculpture Puck.

Thomas Woolner had discussed the feature when Darwin had been sitting to him for a portrait.

Thomas Woolner died instantly from a stroke at the age of 66.