1928 – 2013
Attended Leeds College of Art and the Royal College of Art, London.
1951 Scholarship to Paris to study with Ossip Zadkine (also tutor to Gerda Rubinstein). Meet Giacometti and Richier.
Henry Moore sponsored him to study Etruscan Art in Italy.
1954 He worked making mosaic panels for Picasso in Cannes.
Was part of the group known as ‘geometry of fear’. Contemporary of Turnbull, Armitage and Paolozzi.
Made RA in 1972. Went to live near Elisabeth Frink and Skeaping in the South of France.
See profile in Friends Newsletter 5 November 2008
Works
Sheep Shearer
Modelled and bronze cast 1955
Height: 2’2”
Adjacent to common room in Momples Road, Ladyshot housing area
Bought by the Trust in 1956 while a student at the Royal College of Art in 1956. (see reference in Playhouse Exhibition 1978, Sculpture an Individual Choice, curated by Lady Gibberd). It has been given a Grade 11 listing by English Heritage. (DCMS in 1997)
In 1956 the Trust asked Brown to submit ideas for the now completed Market Square. The committee met to view these at Phillip Hendy’s office at the National Gallery and on the basis of his drawings and maquette, commissioned the Figures with a Carcass (renamed Meat Porters).
Meat Porters
Bronze cast modelled 1959 Ht 7’
Market Square Town Centre
See: https://www.ralphbrown.co.uk/the-meat-porters
Commissioned in 1959 by the Trust the piece was cast in concrete and fibre glass and shown at the Sculpture in the Open Air, Battersea Park 1960. Called Sacophori it won second at John Moore’s Liverpool 1959. Then cast again in bronze with help from Elmgrant Trust the piece was finally sited in the Market Square in 1960. It too has been given Grade 11 listing by English Heritage. In 2000 a further version was made from the concrete and resin mould for the Cass Foundation, which Brown had kept in his studio.
Nearly life size, and mounted on a plinth in front of the stalls, the work faces the pedestrian Broad Walk. Its reference to the abattoir, market trade and labour are appropriate in its location.
Later with the help of the Contemporary Art Society McWilliam’s Portrait Figure was purchased and sited near it. The policy of purchasing work from new and aspiring sculptors was helped by national donations to the Trust as well as the Development Corporation.