Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 62.djvu/442

 appointed professor of sculpture, but never lectured, and resigned in 1879. In 1864 he married Alice Gertrude Waugh, by whom he had two sons and four daughters. His death on 7 Oct. 1892 was somewhat sudden, following an internal complaint from which he seemed to be recovering. The fact that he died within a few days of Tennyson and Renan served to divert much of the notice which his disappearance would otherwise have occasioned. One of his most beautiful works, the statue of ‘The Housemaid,’ had been completed a few weeks previously. He was interred in the churchyard of St. Mary's, Hendon.

Woolner occupies a distinguished and highly individual place in English art, both as the chosen transmitter to posterity of the sculptured semblances of the most intellectual men of his day, and as filling more conspicuously than any other artist the interval between Gibson and the younger sculptors under whom the art has revived so remarkably in our own day. His open-air statues are reckoned among the ornaments of the cities where they are erected; that of Mill is perhaps the best in the metropolis for animation and expression. The finest of his busts, especially the two of Tennyson, are characterised by peculiar dignity. He restored the neglected art of medallion portraiture, and illustrated it by fine examples. Being chiefly known as a portrait-sculptor, he is regarded as in some measure a realist; it may be doubted, however, whether his genius was not in reality rather directed to the ideal. A graceful fancy characterised his earliest efforts, and when he could escape from portraiture, he gratified himself with such highly ideal works as ‘Guinevere’ and ‘Godiva.’ Perhaps the most beautiful work he ever wrought is not a sculpture at all, but the vignette of the flute-player on the title-page of Palgrave's ‘Golden Treasury,’ a gem of grace and charm. His last work, ‘The Housemaid,’ proves of what graceful treatment a homely and prosaic subject may admit. The maiden is simply wringing a cloth in a pail, but her attitude realises in sober earnest what, nearly half a century before, Clough had said in burlesque: Scrubbing requires for true grace frank and artistical handling. Woolner's poetry is that of a sculptor; he works, as it were, by little chipping strokes, and produces, especially in descriptive passages and in the expression of strong feeling, effects highly truthful and original, though scarcely to be termed captivating or inspiring. The recension of ‘My Beautiful Lady’ published separately in 1863 was very considerably expanded from the original version in the ‘Germ.’ It reached a third edition in 1866 (with a title-page vignette by Arthur Hughes). ‘Pygmalion’ was published in 1881, ‘Silenus’ in 1884, ‘Tiresias’ in 1886, and ‘Poems’ (comprising ‘Nelly Dale,’ written in 1886, and ‘Children’) in 1887. ‘My Beautiful Lady’ (in 3 parts, 17 cantos in all), together with ‘Nelly Dale,’ was issued in 1887 as volume lxxxii. of ‘Cassell's National Library.’

Woolner was a thoroughly sterling character; manly, animated, energetic; too impetuous in denouncing whatever he happened to dislike, and thus creating unnecessary enmities, but esteemed by all who knew his worth, and could appreciate the high standard he sought to maintain in the pursuit of his art. His appearance throughout life corresponded with F. G. Stephens's description of him as a young man, ‘robust, active, muscular, with a square-featured and noble face set in thick masses of hair, and penetrating eyes under full eyebrows.’

The print-room at the British Museum has a portrait engraved from a photograph and a drawing of Woolner in his studio after T. Blake Wirgman (see also Illustrated London News, 15 Oct. 1892).

[F. G. Stephens in the Art Journal for March 1894; Justin H. McCarthy in the Portrait, No. 5; Magazine of Art, December 1892; Athenæum, 15 Oct. 1892; Autobiographical Notes of the Life of W. Bell Scott, 1892; Miles's Poets and Poetry of the Century, v. 263; Saturday Review, 15 Oct. 1892; private information; personal knowledge.] 

WOOLRIDGE, JOHN (fl. 1669), agricultural writer. [See .]

WOOLRYCH, HUMPHREY WILLIAM (1795–1871), biographer and legal writer, was the representative of an ancient Shropshire family [see ]. His father, Humphry Cornewall Woolrych, purchased in 1794 and 1799 an estate at Croxley in Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire, and died there on 25 March 1816. He married on 12 Sept. 1793, at the church of St. George the Martyr, Queen Square, London, Elizabeth, elder daughter and coheiress of William Bentley of Red Lion Square, London.

Their son, Humphry William, was born at Southgate, Middlesex, on 24 Sept. 1795. At the election of 1811 Woolrych was in the fifth form, upper division, at Eton (, Eton Lists, p. 67), and he