Ivor Roberts-Jones RA, British 1916-1966 - Sir Winston Churchill, maquette for the monument in Parliament Square, c.1971-3; bronze with stone base, cast in the Meridian Bronze Foundry in an edition of 500, numbered '434' on bronze base, inscribed...

Ivor Roberts-Jones RA,
British 1916-1966 -

Sir Winston Churchill, maquette for the monument in Parliament Square, c.1971-3;

bronze with stone base, cast in the Meridian Bronze Foundry in an edition of 500, numbered '434' on bronze base, inscribed 'Churchill' on stone base, 52 x 22.9 x 20.3 cm (62.2 x 22.9 x 20.3 cm including stone base) (ARR)

Note: this work is accompanied by a certificate signed by the artist and numbered '434'.

Robert-Jones is most famous for his sculpture of Winston Churchill, commissioned in 1971, which now stands in Parliament Square. This smaller maquette of the sculpture was created due to the enduring popularity of the work, which is one of the most recognisable public works of art in the UK. One of the maquettes for an earlier version of the work, which depicts Churchill in his garter robes, was donated to the National Churchill Library and Centre in Washington D.C. by the Centre’s chairman Laurence Geller.

Roberts-Jones was one of the founding members of the Society of Portrait Sculptors, and from 1964-1978 he was the head of the sculpture department at Goldsmiths. Roberts-Jones’s first major, full-scale commission was a memorial sculpture of the painter Augustus John, which was erected near the latter’s home in Fordingbridge, Hampshire. Roberts-Jones produced portrait sculptures of a number of well-known artists and writers other than John, such as Somerset Maugham, Kyffin Williams and Clive Gardiner, the principal of Goldsmiths’ College School of Art, under whom Roberts-Jones himself had studied.