Sir William Reid Dick’s sculptural production was much indebted to the work of New Sculpture artists, but also steeped in Rodin’s end-of-the-century lessons, representing a unique form of artistic expression in England during the first half of the 20th century.
Reid Dick was born in Glasgow in 1878 in a working-class family. He received limited schooling and started training as a stonemason in his early teens and then worked as a carver on the Kelvingrove Art Gallery. There, he met George Frampton – the superintending sculptor – and Francis Derwent-Wood, who was working temporarily on the project. This encounter represented a key moment in the career of the artist, who left his job as stonemason and started training at the Glasgow School of Art.
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