Allan Gairdner Wyon FRBS RMS (1882 – 26 February 1962) was a British die-engraver and sculptor and, in later life, vicar in Newlyn, Cornwall.
Many of his works are memorials with a number located in British cathedrals.[1] Other, more decorative, works include the relief of a male figure representing the East Wind on the London Underground headquarters building at 55 Broadway above St James's Park Underground Station.[1]
Biography
Wyon was born in 1882, the son of Allan Wyon FSA (1843–1907) and Harriet Gairdner.[2] Wyon's father, two of his uncles, his grandfather and his great-grandfather successively held the position of Chief Engraver of Seals to the monarch.[2] William Wyon (1795-1851) was official chief engraver at the Royal Mint.
Wyon attended Highgate School and, like others in his family, studied sculpture in London from 1905 to 1909 at the Royal Academy.[3] From 1910 to 1911 he was an assistant sculptor to Hamo Thornycroft.[2] Between 1924 and 1930 he was Honorary Secretary of the Art Workers Guild. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society of British Sculptors and also worked as a die-engraver, but took Holy Orders in 1933. From 1936 until his retirement in 1955, he was vicar of St. Peter's, Newlyn.[1]
He married Eileen May Trench in 1910; they had one daughter.[1] He had three sisters, Olive, and two others. One an Anglican Deaconess and the other a Congregational minister. His brother was Guy Alfred Wyon, a pathologist.[2]
Works
Wyon exhibited a wide range of sculptures, busts medals and engravings at the Royal Academy. He designed commemorative and memorial medals for the Masons, the London Chamber of Commerce, and Lloyd's.[1]
Sculptured memorials in Salisbury Cathedral by Wyon include those to:[1]
Other memorials include those to:[1]
- Bishop Percival, in Hereford Cathedral.
- Bishop Frere, in Truro Cathedral.
- Bishop Walpole, in St. Mary's Cathedral in Edinburgh.
- The combined Memorial to William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham, and William Pitt the Younger, at Hayes near Bromley in Kent.
- Cambrian Railways War Memorial, Oswestry, Shropshire.[4]
- The figure of St Michael, Shropshire War memorial, Shrewsbury.[5]
- Female standing figure with laurel wreath, Hinckley and District War Memorial.
- The Richard Corfield Memorial, at Marlborough College.
- Joseph Watson, 1st Baron Manton, in Leeds Infirmary, Great George Street Entrance Hall, unveiled 1931.[6]
- Allan G. Wyon's brother Guy Alfred Wyon (1883–1924), in Old Leeds School of Medicine in Thoresby Place, Leeds.[7]
Other works:
- The Sorrows of Mankind, 1920
- Egyptian Nude, 1917
- Madonna and Child, Newlyn Church Cornwall
- Christ the leader, In the South Transept of St Columb Major Church, Cornwall
- New Birth, 1931, West wall of the baptistery of St Columb Major Church, Cornwall
- Lion on Rock, 1920
- Seal[8] for the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
- East Wind on 55 Broadway, headquarters of the Underground Electric Railways Company of London (now London Underground)
- Bronze Plaques of Kenrick and Jefferson previously at Kenrick and Jefferson Printing Works Ltd http://blackcountryhistory.org/collections/getrecord/GB146_BS-KJ/ Archived 21 April 2015 at the Wayback Machine now privately owned
References
