Ben Uri Research Unit

Born: 1848 Auxerre, France

Died: 1917 London, England

Year of Migration to the UK: 1872

Other name/s: Edward Lantéri, Professor Edouard Lanteri

Biography

Sculptor and teacher Edouard Lantéri was born in Auxerre, France, on 1 November 1848., son of a tradesman. As a young man he trained in Paris, first at the Petite École de Dessin, while working for the sculptor François-Joseph Duret, and then, from 1865 to 1868, at the École des Beaux-Arts, under Pierre-Jules Cavelier and Eugène Guillaume, having also studied with Aimé Millet. The Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 interrupted his early career. For eighteen months he worked as a cabinet maker's assistant, repairing furniture damaged during the bombardment of Paris. In 1872, on the recommendation of his friend and fellow sculptor, Jules Dalou, Lanteri then immigrated to England to take up a position as assistant to the sculptor, Joseph Edgar Boehm, a role he held until Boehm's death in 1890.

Lanteri worked chiefly in bronze, though he was also a skilful carver in marble, and his output ranged from portrait busts and medals to ideal figures and decorative reliefs on literary and mythological themes, among them a marble relief of Beatrice from Dante's Divine Comedy and the bronze group The Duet, discussed in a profile of his career published in the Magazine of Art in December 1900 (Globe, 5 December 1900). One of his earliest mentions in the British press appeared in 1893; while at work on a statue of the Emperor Frederick, Lanteri suffered from a painful affliction then described as 'sculptor's rheumatism'; in gratitude for his treatment at the Electropathic and Zander Institute, he presented its president, C. B. Harness, with a portrait bust, which was reported as being on view at the Royal Academy (Evening News, London, 9 February 1893). In 1899, as a pupil of Alphonse Legros, he contributed a fountain design, Le Pêcheur et la Sirène, to a garden-ornament exhibition at the Dutch Gallery, London (The World, 15 February 1899). His academic training gave him a naturalistic, romantic French approach to modelling that influenced the New Sculpture movement, combining close observation of the model with attention to surface and movement. He later set out these principles in his manual Modelling: A Guide for Teachers and Students (1902, 1904, 1911). Based in England for most of his career, he transmitted French modelling practice to a generation of British-born sculptors.

From 1880 Lanteri taught modelling at the National Art Training School in South Kensington, renamed the Royal College of Art in 1897; succeeding Dalou as Master of Modelling; around 1900–01, he became the college's first Professor of Sculpture and Modelling, a post he held for the rest of his life, alongside fellow professors Beresford Pite, Gerald Moira and W. R. Lethaby (Dundee Courier, 29 December 1953). In 1905–06 he supervised students working on the sculptural figures of Fame, Sculpture and Architecture on the Exhibition Road facade of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Lanteri first exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in 1887, showing three works including a bust of 'L. Bernieri, Esq.' and a terracotta bust of 'Monsieur Chauffourier, President of the French Benevolent Society' (The Exhibition of the Royal Academy of Arts, 1887 catalogue), and continued to exhibit there between 1889 and 1914. He was also a regular exhibitor at the Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts (1896-1910), Royal Birmingham Society of Artists (1905, 1909-10), International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers (1906-09) and the Royal Scottish Academy (1907, 1911, 1913). In 1898 he showed the bronze group Fisherman and Mermaid at the Autumn Exhibition of the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, and in 1903 he showed three sculptures at the Special Loan Exhibition of Paintings of the British School and Sculpture at Nottingham Castle Museum. In 1914 he also showed sculpture at the Three Arts Club's annual exhibition, London, alongside works by Rodin and George Frampton (Morning Post, 3 April 1914). He was a member of the Art Workers' Guild from 1901 to 1906 and of the Royal Society of British Sculptors from 1905 until his death. Among his notable Royal College students were Charles Sargeant Jagger (1908-11), later his assistant; Charles Wheeler (1912–17); Richard A. Ray, who later designed Sunderland's war memorial (Sunderland Daily Echo and Shipping Gazette, 26 December 1922), and Albert Toft, William Kellock Brown and Gilbert Ledward. Rodin later wrote a foreword to Lanteri's manual, addressing him as 'Dear Master'.

Lanteri also undertook public commissions in his later years, including a statue of the Jewish industrialist, Sir Ludwig Mond (1839-1909), unveiled in 1912 on Ynyspenllwch Road, Clydach, near Swansea, and a statue of Sir Samuel Sadler (1842-1911), erected in 1913 at Central Square, Dunning Street, Middlesbrough. He also collaborated with the sculptor William Martin on a commemorative relief marking the site of the Globe Playhouse, unveiled in Park Street, Southwark. His plaster figure Pax, modelled in 1896 for the instruction of National Art Training School students and later exhibited at the Royal Academy, was reproduced for Salford's art galleries at Peel Park, where it was displayed in the Langworth Gallery (Manchester Courier, 7 November 1900). In 1903, in gratitude, his pupils presented a bronze portrait bust of Lanteri to the national collection of British art at Millbank, now Tate (Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette, 1 January 1903). Lanteri continued teaching at the Royal College of Art until the end of his life.

Edouard Lanteri died in East Acton, London, England, on 18 December 1917. A posthumous exhibition of his work at the Leicester Galleries in 1920 brought together examples of his oeuvre, ranging from from the narrative Fisherman and Mermaid and Madonna's Dream to decorative garden ornaments. In the UK public domain, his works are held in collections including the Tate, Victoria and Albert Museum and the National Portrait Gallery.

Michal Mel

Related books

Terry Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of Kensington and Chelsea with Westminster South-West (Watford: PSSA Publishing, 2023)
Edward Morris and Emma Roberts, Public Sculpture of Cheshire and Merseyside (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2012)
Terry Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of South London (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2007)
M. Stocker, 'Lantéri, Edward [Édouard] (1848-1917)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004)
Paul Usherwood, Jeremy Beach and Catherine Morris, Public Sculpture of North-East England (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2000)
Alexander Stuart Gray, Edwardian Architecture: A Biographical Dictionary (London: Duckworth, 1985)
S. Beattie, The New Sculpture (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1983)
Dundee Courier, 29 December 1953, p. 3
'Glorious Dead 1914-1918', Sunderland Daily Echo and Shipping Gazette, 26 December 1922, p. 3
'Art Exhibitions', Morning Post, 3 April 1914, p. 20
'Social and Personal', Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette, 1 January 1903, p. 4
Edouard Lanteri, Modelling: A Guide for Teachers and Students, 3 vols (London: Chapman and Hall, 1902-11)
'Art and Artists', Globe, 5 December 1900, p.4
'Addition to the Salford Art Galleries', Manchester Courier, 7 November 1900, p. 5
'In the Picture Galleries', The World, 15 February 1899, p. 14
'Successful Men', Evening News, London, 9 February 1893, p. 4
The Exhibition of the Royal Academy of Arts, MDCCCLXXXVII: The One Hundred and Nineteenth (London: William Clowes and Sons, 1887)

Public collections

Related organisations

Art Workers' Guild (member)
International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers (exhbitor)
Royal Academy of Arts (exhibitor)
Royal Birmingham Society of Artists (exhibitor)
Royal College of Art (teacher; professor)
Royal Scottish Academy (exhibitor)
Royal Society of British Sculptors (member)

Selected exhibitions

Exhibition of Sculpture by the late Prof. E. Lanteri, Leicester Galleries, London (1920)
Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh (1907; 1911; 1913)
Royal Birmingham Society of Artists, Birmingham (1905; 1909-1910)
International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers, London (1906-1909)
Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts, London (1887; 1889-1914)
Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts, Glasgow (1896-1910)
Special Loan Exhibition of Paintings of the British School and Sculpture, Nottingham Castle Museum, Nottingham (1903)
Annual Exhibition, Three Arts Club, London (1914)
Autumn Exhibition, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool (1898)
Exhibition of garden ornaments, Dutch Gallery, London (1899)

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Edouard Lantéri]