George Frampton - Early Life and Career

Early Life and Career

Frampton, the London-born son of a stonemason, began his working life in an architect's office before studying under William Silver Frith at the City and Guilds of London Art School (formerly Lambeth School of Art). He went on to the Royal Academy Schools where he won the Gold Medal and Travelling Scholarship. From 1887 to 1890 Frampton undertook further study and work at the studio of Antonin Mercie in Paris.

Frampton returned to England and took up a teaching position at the Slade School of Art in 1893 By the this time, Frampton was, according to the critic M.H. Spielmann "in open rebellion against white sculpture". In 1895 he showed Mother and Child at the Royal Academy, a polychromatic work, with the figures in bronze against a copper plaque, and a white disc behind the head. In his statue of Dame Alice Owen (1895) he combined bronze and marble, and in Lamia contrasted an ivory head and neck with bronze clothing. He made many busts and reliefs, mostly as memorials. His statues included large bronzes of Queen Victoria erected in Calcutta in 1901 and on the grounds of the Manitoba Legislative Building in Winnipeg in 1904.

Frampton's first house and studio was at 32 Queen's Grove (where a blue plaque to his name has been erected), but he later built a larger house nearby in Carlton Hill, both in St John's Wood, London. He was married to the artist Christabel Cockerell and had one son, the painter and etcher Meredith Frampton.