William Brodie (sculptor)

William Brodie (sculptor)

William Brodie (January 22, 1815 – October 30, 1881) was a Scottish sculptor. He was the son of John Brodie, a Banff shipmaster, and elder brother of Alexander Brodie (1830–1867), another sculptor.

He was elected Associate of the Royal Scottish Academy (RSA) in 1857, and Royal Scottish Academician in 1859 . In 1876 he was appointed Secretary of the RSA, a post he held until his death.

When he was about six years old, his family moved to Aberdeen. William Brodie was later apprenticed to a plumber, but studied in his spare time at the Mechanic's Institute, where he amused himself by casting lead figures of well-known people. He soon began to model small medallion portraits which attracted the attention of John Hill Burton. It was Burton who encouraged him to go to Edinburgh in 1847. Here Brodie studied for four years at the Trustees' School of Design, learning to model on a larger scale, and also executing a bust of one of his earliest patrons, Lord Jeffrey.

About 1853 he went to Rome, where he studied under Lawrence Macdonald, and it was with the latter's assistance that he modelled "Corinna, the Lyric Muse", a work which Copeland reproduced in miniature in "Parian" four years later.

In 1875 he made the group of "A Peer and His Lady Doing Homage" for the Prince Consort Memorial in Edinburgh.

Brodie exhibited at the Royal Academy, 1850–1881, and at the Royal Scottish Academy, 1847–1881; at the Great Exhibition of 1851 he showed a group of "Little Nell and Her Grandfather" (characters from Dickens' The Old Curiosity Shop). His most famous work is probably Greyfriar's Bobby.

He died at his home in Cambridge Street, Edinburgh, on 30 October 1881. He is buried in the Dean Cemetery under a simple granite monument surmounted by an urn, unlike his far grander monuments to others around him.

His daughter Mary married the maverick Edinburgh architect, Sir James Gowans.