The Sculptor of the 'Mexico' Monument - William Birnie Rhind (1853-1933)

 A significant area of my research has been and will continue be the sculptor of St Anne's Mexico monument William Birnie Rhind. Whilst not generally considered to be in the major league he does have a considerable reputation as a talented and prolific artist, particularly in Scotland where he lived and obtained most of his commissions.

The figure for the Mexico Monument in the Studio of William Birnie Rhind, 1888
Red Rose Collections, Lancashire County Council

At the time of securing the commission for the Mexico monument, Rhind was establishing his reputation working in partnership with his father, John, on numerous public commissions in Scotland from their Edinburgh-based firm. As he was applying for the work at St Anne's, he was working on another solo project for a monument to the Black Watch Regiment which was unveiled in Aberfeldy in November 1887. 

Black Watch Memorial, Aberfeldy
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Black_watch_monument_Aberfeldy.jpg

I am not sure whether any of the St Anne's commissioning body (The St Anne's on the Sea Lifeboat Disaster Committee) had any real awareness of him or his developing reputation, but his unusual figurative design certainly appealed. The Lytham Times of 20 July 1887 listed the six designs that had been chosen from a short list of about thirty. The other candidates included an allegorical figure of Hope along with a relief illustrating a lifeboat rescue; an ornamental pilaster with figures representing Vigilance and Fortitude; a cluster of pilasters with a female figure above together with a lifeboat and marine scene and finally, a simple obelisk . The news article describes these five designs in a perfunctory manner not expressing opinions, but Rhind's proposed monument is praised as being 'altogether a most striking design'.

There are several useful online sources for the work and life of William Birnie Rhind, notably the database 'Mapping the Practice and Profession of Sculpture in Britain and Ireland 1851-1951' from the University of Glasgow, and his Wikipedia page which both list many of his works and outline his career and family. One of the most important sources for me, however, was a 1977 PhD thesis that I came across on the British Library 'EThOS' service – a fantastic resource for any researcher, academic or otherwise. The title is 'Nineteenth Century Scottish Sculpture' and it was the work of Robin Lee Woodward who now works in the field of Public Art at Auckland University, New Zealand. It covers most of the influential Scottish sculptors of the time giving biographical details. In addition, The Royal Scottish Academy also sent me a transcription of an obituary which appeared in their Annual Report of 1933.

Another valuable source has been family history data and, looking at census records, we can see that in 1871, at the age of 18, William Birnie Rhind was  living with his father John and mother Catherine, along with siblings at 26 Royal Crescent in Edinburgh. William’s occupation is given as a 'Sculptor and Student', whilst his father John is a 'Sculptor employing 15 men and 8 boys' in what would appear to be a well-developed business. Street View on Google Maps shows that Royal Crescent is, and was, an elegant street of three and four storey Georgian houses. By the time of the 1881 census, and six years before his commission for the Mexico monument William is still living with his parents. His occupation is given as 'Sculptor' and his father now 'employs 13 boys, 7 men and 1 woman. As yet I have not  found him in the 1891 census but in between 1881 and 1891 marriage records show that he married an Alice Stone on 22 December 1886 in London, just thirteen days after the disaster which resulted in the commission he was to undertake at St Anne’s. In 1901 he is again given as a 'Sculptor' and is listed as a 'Boarder' at The Dunblane Hydropathic. Presumably he was taking a cure or enjoying some rest and recuperation in this elite establishment. In the same 1901 Census, his wife Alice is at the family home on Cambridge Street in Edinburgh along with their four daughters, Beatrice, Kate, Primrose and Gladys. 

 As well as being an artist Rhind was also a businessman and, along with his brothers John Massey Rhind and Thomas Duncan Rhind, he had followed his father John into the profession. John Rhind, was a stone-carver and mason who moved to Edinburgh and trained under Alexander Handyside Ritchie before becoming one of the most noted sculptors in Scotland and an Associate of the Royal Scottish Academy in 1892. William  worked in his father's firm for several years and also had a studio in Glasgow with his brother John for a time before setting up on his own account. His great-grandfather, also a John Rhind, was a Master Builder from Banff and came from a family of masons who can be traced in Banff from the 18^th Century. There was, therefore, a generational connection in stone working in tandem with a gradual professionalization within the family. This parallels an ascent up the social ladder as they rise from artisans to become members of professional associations. Such credentials were clearly important to Rhind and his career as he in turn became an associate of the Royal Scottish Academy in 1893 and a full member in 1905. He also joined the London-based Royal Society of Sculptors in 1906 one year after its establishment in 1905.

Membership of these professional bodies demonstrate Rhind's position at the top of his profession and as a member of social elites.  Newspaper articles and biographies show him to have been patriotic and conservative in outlook. He was a member of the Scottish Conservative Club and his recreations included the perhaps aspirational pastimes of golf and billiards. He would certainly have been on an equal social footing with the eminent townsfolk and businessmen who were the commissioners of the Mexico monument. In the reported dialogue between the two parties in the minutes of the Lifeboat Disaster Committee he seems quite confident in expressing his opinions as to the appropriateness of certain aspects of the construction and in asking for payment that was due to  him.

In terms of the subject matter of Rhind's work over the course of his career the Black Watch Memorial was the forerunner of many war memorials on which, to a large extent, his reputation came to be based. I think that many viewers of the Mexico memorial might consider that it also has a certain martial character with the lifebuoy and rope as the armoury and weapons for these 'Warriors of the Sea' (see the post on Poetry of Commemoration).

Another well-documented aspect of Rhind's work is representations of certain kinds of 'realism'. He strove to get details of dress and uniform right and this features in the Mexico memorial which shows a lifeboat man kitted out in the appropriate clothing and equipment. This detail was not speculative but based on a photographic image of Thomas Harrison, a member of the St Anne's lifeboat crew following the disaster  . During the process of sculpting Rhind also received an image of the coxswain who was lost in the disaster, William Johnson. In another example of Rhind's realism, it is Johnson’s features which are captured in the final design. In a similar manner, the main figure on the Black Watch memorial  is reproduced from a likeness of an individual , in this case a painting of  a Private Farquhar Shaw, a member of the regiment in the 1740s.* 

A further element of Rhind's realism is again captured in the figure of Farquhar Shaw being caught in a state of suspended action about to draw his sword. Similar characteristics can be found in other war memorials by Rhind and an arresting example is the Fettes College War Memorial. Given the location it is unsurprising that the figure on the memorial depicts an officer, but the soldier is caught in an attitude of movement as he falls, presumably wounded or slain. This state of action/stasis is also well captured in the St Anne's monument where the lifeboatman is caught looking out to sea and ready for action.

Fettes College War Memorial
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fettes_College_War_Memorial.JPG

In portraying ordinary soldiers and an ordinary lifeboat man Rhind was working within a wider trend of realistic representations of everyday life in the European sculpture of the period. Sometimes this realism was often tinged with a certain romanticism but there were also aspirations to represent ordinary working people in a truthful way whilst imbuing an element of the heroic. This can be seen more acutely and in a more developed way in sculptors of the near continent such as Aimé-Jules Dalou whose representations of workers and everyday people reflected his socialist outlook. Another such was the Belgian painter and sculptor Constantin Meunier, an artist from a working-class background who often presented realistic depictions of agricultural and industrial workers.

'Statue de Paysan', Aimé-Jules Dalou
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dalou_paysan.jpg

'De Puddeler', Constantin Meunier
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Constantin_Meunier_-_De_puddeler.jpg

By all accounts Rhind did not share the politics of Meunier and Dalou. However, he did study for a while in France and his brother John Massey Rhind worked under Dalou in Paris in the 1880s. Consequently, he would surely have been aware of the developing practice of such representations in figurative sculpture. To some extent Rhind's depictions of ordinary soldiers and the St Anne's lifeboatman put him in this context, but the closest Rhind got to this sort of portrayal was in his frieze representing Mining, Agriculture and Fishing on the former Mid-Lothian County Chambers in Edinburgh (1902-1904). The Public Sculpture of Edinburgh talks of the 'vivid realism' of  Mining  and explicitly places this in the European tradition of realism, citing Meunier as the most significant figure in this genre. Edinburgh in the Public Buildings of Scotland series has even called it 'a foretaste of socialist realism'.

Aside from his war memorials commissions for public and commercial buildings, particularly in Edinburgh, were a major part of Rhind's output. Soon after the unveiling of the Mexico memorial he contributed allegorical figures to the National Museum of Scotland building (1888-89). He also went on to provide figures to The Scotsman building (1901-04), Jenners Department Store (1893-94), and made several figurative contributions to the Scottish National Portrait Gallery building (1890-1906).

St Anne's was indeed lucky to get such a talented professional sculptor to produce the monument for a relatively inexpensive £200 and David Cross has suggested that 'Rhind may have secured this commission, despite its low remuneration, in order to obtain more work in north-west England'. He did later go on to produce more traditional allegorical figures for the Liverpool Cotton Exchange (1905-6) (the building is now gone but the sculpture remains on the same site) and male and female figures for Liverpool University's Ashton Building (1912-14). He was later also commissioned for the Wallasey War Memorial in New Brighton (1921) which again depicts ordinary servicemen in an attitude of readiness for action. Prior to these works, in 1897 he had already gained a major commission south of the border,  reproducing allegorical figures of working men for the County Offices in Wakefield.

Male and Female Figures
Ashton Building, Liverpool University

War Memorial
New Brighton, Wallasey
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:New_Brighton_War_Memorial.jpg

'Agriculture' and 'Iron Moulding'
County Offices, Wakefield
Internet Archive, University of California
http://www.victorianweb.org/sculpture/rhind/9.html 

Allegorical Female Figure
From former Corn Exchange, Liverpool

As I have noted, at the time of the commissioning there are no indications that the Disaster Committee was aware of Rhind as a sculptor or his father's distinguished standing. Two years later, however, reporting on the unveiling of the monument, the Lytham Times of 25 May 1888 is keen to note that he belongs to 'a firm of sculptors who have been entrusted with a great number of public works of a like kind in Scotland'. It also refers to the Aberfeldy Black Watch monument which had been illustrated in the Graphic and current work on a statue of the Marquis of Montrose at St Giles' Cathedral in Edinburgh which was being erected on suggestion of the Queen. William’s growing reputation, his connections with great buildings, and his royal associations are now being used to elevate and give credibility to the new town of St Anne's. As the town began to shake off initial problems Rhind’s monument is also used up to the 1930s as a potent symbol to project the ambition of the town as it established itself as a prosperous place of residence and an elite seaside resort.

William Birnie Rhind died in Edinburgh on 9 July 1933 and was buried in the family plot at Warriston cemetery, Edinburgh. His wife Alice was buried in the same plot four years later in 1937.

*Private Shaw was an interesting choice as a mutineer but his story is a complicated one more fully explained in the Wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/42nd_Regiment_of_Foot.

Sources

Imperial War Museums. 'Aberfeldy-The Black Watch Regiment'. Accessed 28 September 2020.https://www.iwm.org.uk/memorials/item/memorial/44786.

'AncestryLibraryEdition.Co.Uk'. Accessed 30 September 2020.

'Annual Report of the Royal Scottish Academy'. Royal Scottish Academy, 1933.

David A. Cross. Public Sculpture of Lancashire and Cumbria. Public Sculpture of Britain 19. Liverpool: University Press, 2017.

'Aimé-Jules Dalou | Artnet'. Accessed 29 September 2020. http://www.artnet.com/artists/aim%C3%A9-jules-dalou/.

Gifford, John, Colin McWilliam, David Walker, and Christopher Wilson. Edinburgh. Public Buildings of Scotland. Yale University Press, 2003

'Liverpool Monuments: Cotton Exchange (1)'. Accessed 30 September 2020. http://www.liverpoolmonuments.co.uk/sculpture/cotton01.html.

'St Anne’s Lifeboat Disaster Committee Minutes 1887-1911', n.d. Lytham St Annes RNLI.

Ray McKenzie (Raymond). Public Sculpture of Edinburgh. Public Sculpture of Britain 21. Liverpool: University Press, 2018.

MarfordIan. English: Aberfeldy, River Tay, Tay Bridge. 19 September 2017. Own work. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Black_watch_monument_Aberfeldy.jpg.

'"Models of Statues of Agriculture and Iron Moulding" by William Birnie Rhind, RSA, 1873-11033'. Accessed 30 September 2020. http://www.victorianweb.org/sculpture/rhind/9.html.

'NEW BRIGHTON WAR MEMORIAL, Wirral - 1116885 | Historic England'. Accessed 30 September 2020. https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1116885.

'File:New Brighton War Memorial.Jpg'. In Wikipedia. Accessed 2 October 2020. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:New_Brighton_War_Memorial.jpg.

Petrucci, R., and Charles Ricketts. 'Constantin Meunier'. The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 7, no. 27 (1905): 177–87.

Siren-Com. Français : Statue de Paysan, Jules Dalou, Bronze Posthume d'après Un Plâtre Pour Le Monument Aux Ouvriers Non Réalisé - Hauteur 1,97 m - Musée d'Orsay (Paris) N° RF 2999. 14 January 2010. Own work. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dalou_paysan.jpg.

'The History of Dunblane Hydro'. Accessed 30 September 2020. https://www.doubletreedunblane.com/things-to-do/hotel-history/

'The Lifeboat Memorial at St Anne's on the Sea'. Lytham Times, 20 July 1887.

'The St. Anne’s Lifeboat Disaster - Unveiling of the Monument to the Crew'. Lytham Times, 25 May 1888.

Traynor, Kim. English: Fettes College War Memorial by Birnie Rhind. 30 April 2013. Own work. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fettes_College_War_Memorial.JPG.

Woodward, Robin Lee. 'Nineteenth Century Scottish Sculpture'. Ph.D., University of Edinburgh, 1977. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/10608.

 Andrew Walmsley, September 2020

https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/history/about/people/andrew-walmsley