(b Melbourne, 1889; d Melbourne, 1957). Australian sculptor. He worked as a doctor but was a self-taught artist and devoted his free time to sculpture. From 1914 to 1916 he was in England and France serving in the Royal Army Medical Corps, and in London it is probable that he saw the London Group exhibition of March 1915 and the Vorticist exhibition of June 1915. His own sculpture, at any rate, showed the influence of Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Jacob Epstein and primitivism, making it among the most avant-garde then being produced in Australia and leading to such works as Seated Figure (polished granite; Ballarat, A.G.). Despite his medical work his output was substantial, though his sculptures were small, and he worked mostly in stone, producing animal and figure pieces. His independent means gave him the freedom to be more experimental than many of his Australian colleagues. Between c. 1925 and 1930 he held life classes in Melbourne with his wife Dorothy Stephen, and these attracted such artists as Will Dyson. In his teaching he was a tireless defender of modern sculpture against the lingering aesthetic of 19th-century academicism. In 1936 he became a founder-member of the avant-garde Plastic Group, which included the Australian artist Ola Cohn (1892-1964), and in 1938 he was a founder-member of George Bell's larger Contemporary Art Society.

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The Concise Grove Dictionary of Art. Copyright © 2002 by Oxford University Press, Inc.. All rights reserved.