Object Description
JAMES WOODFORD, RA
(1893-1976)
Cockerel
Signed l.r.: JAMES WOODFORD RA
Red chalk
Framed
31 by 24 cm., 12 ¼ by 9 ½ in.
(frame size 50.5 by 43 cm., 20 by 17 in.)
James Arthur Woodford was born in Nottingham and studied at Nottingham School of Art until the outbreak of World War I, resuming his studies at the Royal College of Art after the war. There he became a Rome Scholar, 1922-25. A sculptor, his first major commission was for a set of bronze doors for Liverpool Blind School. This was followed by his 1934 commission to create a pair of monumental doors for the headquarters of the Royal Institute of British Architects in Portland Place, London. As part of the same project, he also made figures for the exterior columns, interior ceiling plaster reliefs and stone window pieces. During World War II he served as a camouflage officer with the Air Ministry and following the war he created a number of war memorials. For the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953 he made a set of ten plaster sculptures of the Queen’s Beasts, each 6 feet tall, to be placed at the entrance of Westminster Abbey. These are now in the collection of the Canadian Museum of History, Quebec but stone replicas were made which were presented to Kew Gardens in 1956. Woodford supplied decorative work and sculpture for many London buildings in London and elsewhere, as well as for the interior the liner RMS Queen Mary.