Alfred Horace "Gerry" Gerrard RBS (7 May 1899 – 13 June 1998) was an English

modernist Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...

sculptor. He was head of the sculpture department at the

Slade School of Fine Art The UCL Slade School of Fine Art (informally The Slade) is the art school of University College London (UCL) and is based in London, England. It has been ranked as the UK's top art and design educational institution. The school is organised as ...

from 1925 and professor of sculpture there from 1949 to 1968, where he taught a number of well-known sculptors.

Early life

Gerrard was born on 7 May 1899 in

Hartford, Cheshire Hartford is a village and civil parishes in England, civil parish in the unitary authority of Cheshire West and Chester and the ceremonial county of Cheshire, England. It lies in the Cheshire Plain, to the south-west of the town of Northwich, ...

where his family had been farming for four centuries. He was the youngest of five children and was directly descended from the 16th century

herbalist Herbal medicine (also called herbalism, phytomedicine or phytotherapy) is the study of pharmacognosy and the use of medicinal plants, which are a basis of traditional medicine. Scientific evidence for the effectiveness of many herbal treatments ...

John Gerard John Gerard (also John Gerarde, 1545–1612) was an English herbalist with a large garden in Holborn, now part of London. His 1,484-page illustrated ''Herball, or Generall Historie of Plantes'', first published in 1597, became a popular garde ...

. Gerrard was educated at Northwich Technical School which he left in 1916. During the First World War, he served in the army with the Cameron Highlanders, the

Black Watch The Black Watch, 3rd Battalion, Royal Regiment of Scotland (3 SCOTS) is an infantry battalion of the Royal Regiment of Scotland. The regiment was created as part of the Childers Reforms in 1881, when the 42nd (Royal Highland) Regiment ...

and the Gordon Highlanders and in the

Royal Flying Corps The Royal Flying Corps (RFC) was the air arm of the British Army before and during the First World War until it merged with the Royal Naval Air Service on 1 April 1918 to form the Royal Air Force. During the early part of the war, the RFC sup ...

(RFC) from 1917. In the RFC, Gerrard flew Farman MF.11s and F.E.2Bs as a night bomber pilot, crashing and injuring his back on one occasion when his undercarriage fell off.

Career

After being demobilized Gerrard studied at the Manchester School of Art in 1919 and at the Slade School of Fine Art from 1920 where

Henry Tonks Henry Tonks, Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, FRCS (9 April 1862 – 8 January 1937) was a British surgeon and later draughtsman and painter of figure subjects, chiefly interiors, and a Caricature, caricaturist. He became an influentia ...

was his teacher and contemporaries included Samuel Rabinovitch. In 1925, Tonks appointed Gerrard head of the school's sculpture department, a position he held until 1948 after which he was Professor of Sculpture until 1968 and then

emeritus professor ''Emeritus/Emerita'' () is an honorary title granted to someone who retires from a position of distinction, most commonly an academic faculty position, but is allowed to continue using the previous title, as in "professor emeritus". In some c ...

. In the 1920s, Gerrard elected to wear a standard set of clothes – sports jacket, corduroy trousers, a collarless shirt and a yellow

stock Stocks (also capital stock, or sometimes interchangeably, shares) consist of all the Share (finance), shares by which ownership of a corporation or company is divided. A single share of the stock means fractional ownership of the corporatio ...

. He bought multiple copies of these items and wore them regularly for decades. During the Second World War, Gerrard was a Staff Captain attached to the

Royal Engineers The Corps of Royal Engineers, usually called the Royal Engineers (RE), and commonly known as the ''Sappers'', is the engineering arm of the British Army. It provides military engineering and other technical support to the British Armed Forces ...

working on

camouflage Camouflage is the use of any combination of materials, coloration, or illumination for concealment, either by making animals or objects hard to see, or by disguising them as something else. Examples include the leopard's spotted coat, the b ...

projects. Following a plane crash in which he was badly injured, he almost had an arm amputated, but persuaded his doctors to save it so that he could continue sculpting. In a long teaching career, Gerrard taught and influenced numerous artists, among them Kenneth Armitage, Karin Jonzen,

Eduardo Paolozzi Sir Eduardo Luigi Paolozzi (, ; 7 March 1924 – 22 April 2005) was a Scottish artist, known for his sculpture and graphic works. He is widely considered to be one of the pioneers of pop art. Early years Eduardo Luigi Paolozzi was born on 7 M ...

and F. E. McWilliam. In the austerity years after the Second World War, Gerrard kept the school supplied with raw materials for sculpting by salvaging stone, wood and metal from bomb sites. Well respected for his expertise as a teacher and his generosity, many of his former students would visit him at his home in Kent where he continued sculpting into his eighties. Whilst teaching at the Slade, Gerrard received private sculpture commissions, often executed on a large scale in stone, as well as producing murals for ocean liners. He also worked as a book illustrator with his future wife Katherine Leigh-Pemberton, producing wood cuts for ''Elephants and Ethnologists'' (by

Grafton Elliot Smith Sir Grafton Elliot Smith (15 August 1871 – 1 January 1937) was an Australian-British anatomist, Egyptologist and a proponent of the hyperdiffusionist view of prehistory. He believed in the idea that cultural innovations occur only once and ...

) and ''Egyptian Mummies'' (by Smith and Warren Royal Dawson) in 1924 and for the ''Book of Bath'' in 1925. During 1944–45 he worked as a

war artist A war artist is an artist either commissioned by a government or publication, or self-motivated, to document first-hand experience of war in any form of illustrative or depictive record.Imperial War Museum (IWM)header phrase, "war shapes lives" ...

. Among his sculptural works are: *''Memorial Stone for a Hunter'', 1926. Displayed temporarily at the

Tate Gallery Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the UK ...

before its final installation. *''North Wind'', 1928–29. One of eight personifications of the four winds commissioned by Charles Holden and

Frank Pick Frank Pick Royal Institute of British Architects, Hon. RIBA (23 November 1878 – 7 November 1941) was a British transport administrator. After qualifying as a solicitor in 1902, he worked at the North Eastern Railway (UK), North Eastern Ra ...

for the headquarters of the Underground Electric Railways Company of London at 55 Broadway. *''St Anselm'', 1933, St Anselm's church, Kennington Cross. *''Monumental Parcel'', gilded carved wooden panels of horses in a forest for RMS ''Britannic''. *''Stages in the Development of Man'', 1955, four wall panels built into the end façade of a building in

Hemel Hempstead Hemel Hempstead () is a town in the Dacorum district in Hertfordshire, England. It is located north-west of London; nearby towns and cities include Watford, St Albans and Berkhamsted. The population at the 2021 United Kingdom census, 2021 cens ...

. *''The Dance'', 1960, a sculpture wall for which he was awarded the Royal British Society of Sculptors' Silver medal. An exhibition of his work was staged at the South London Art Gallery in 1978. Collections that contain work by Gerrard include the Tate Gallery, and the

Imperial War Museum The Imperial War Museum (IWM), currently branded "Imperial War Museums", is a British national museum. It is headquartered in London, with five branches in England. Founded as the Imperial War Museum in 1917, it was intended to record the civ ...

. The

Henry Moore Institute The Henry Moore Foundation is a registered charity in England, established for education and promotion of the fine arts — in particular, to advance understanding of the works of Henry Moore, and to promote the public appreciation of sculpt ...

archive contains works by Gerrard and his papers.

Family

Gerrard married three times: #1933, Katherine Leigh-Pemberton (died 1970) #1972, Nancy Sinclair (died 1995) #1995, Karen Sinclair He had no children.

Notes and references

Notes

References

Bibliography

* *

External links

London Transport Museum Photographic Archive
**

Imperial War Museum

''Wing Commander James E ('Johnnie') Johnson''

''Wing Commander John C Button''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gerrard, Alfred 1899 births 1998 deaths Artists from Cheshire Academics of the Slade School of Fine Art English sculptors English male sculptors British modern sculptors English war artists British Army personnel of World War I British Army personnel of World War II Royal Air Force personnel of World War I British World War I pilots 20th-century English sculptors