George Clark Stanton RSA 1832-1894

Clark Stanton, R.S.A., died on 8th January. Born in Birmingham in 1832, he was educated in King Edward’s Grammar School, and afterwards entered the Birmingham School of Art. He began his artistic career
as a designer and modeller with the firm of Elkington and Mason, silversmiths, and was afterwards sent by them to study in Italy, where he remained for some time.

In 1855 he came to Edinburgh, and two years later exhibited for the first time in the Annual Exhibition of the Academy, a statue called “The Ivy Wreath” being his principal contribution that year. He executed several statues for the niches of the Scott monument. Thereafter portrait busts and medallions came chiefly from his hands, but he still continued to design and model plate and cups for silversmiths.

Latterly he turned his attention to painting in oil and water-colour, and he was also largely employed in the work of book illustration. Amongst his best works in sculpture are the life-size group representing the Navy,
the Army, etc, at the north-west angle of the Prince Consort Memorial in Charlotte Square, Edinburgh, and the Volunteer Caledonian Challenge Shield.

He was elected an Associate in 1862, and an Academician in 1883. For
twelve years he was Curator of the Life School of the Academy, to which office he was appointed in 1881.

RSA Obituary transcribed from the 1894 RSA Annual Report