Proudfoot, Alexander

Person

Proudfoot, Alexander

1878-1957

Liverpool-born sculptor, associated with Archibald Dawson and Benno Schotz throughout the inter-war years as the most important sculptors of their generation in the west of Scotland. Proudfoot was a student of modelling and stone carving at GSA during from 1896/97 to 1908/9, winning the Haldane Travelling Scholarship in 1908. He was also a member of GSA staff from 1909 until 1928, and became Head of Sculpture in 1912. He was busy throughout 1914, working on carving for the Trades House and Old Deacons Club, as well as exhibiting various portrait busts and reliefs. His output was interrupted, however, by the First World War, in which he served as a sergeant in the Artists Rifles, during which time he invented a protractor for the Vickers machine gun. Even so he managed to exhibit Charon at Royal Glasgow Institute of Fine Arts in 1915. After the war he continued as an independent sculptor, with a prodigious output of portrait busts and ideal work, and remained Head of Sculpture at GSA until 1928. He also secured commissions for war memorials at Bearsden (1924), and Greenock (1924). He was elected Associate Royal Scottish Academy in 1921, Scottish Academy in 1932, and was President of Glasgow Art Club three times between 1924 and 1939. Two years before his death he married his assistant, Ivy Gardner. GSA collections holds one of his pieces - the Newbery Medal which was a prize awarded annually to the ‘student who passes the Diploma Examination with the most distinction’. Proudfoot appears on Glasgow School of Art's First World War Roll of Honour. If you have any more information, please get in touch.

McKenzie, Ray, Public Sculpture of Glasgow