Edward Hill Lacey (1891 – 1967) was born in Bradford and rose from humble origins to become a successful London-based sculptor and etcher.
His parents, William and Mary, were from working class backgrounds; his father was a warehouse worker in the local wool trade. The family lived in the Great Horton district of the city and Edward attended the nearby Grange Secondary School.
It is not known what employment Edward entered on leaving school, but by the age of 19 he had started an art course at Bradford School of Art, near his home. He later spoke to a local journalist of his time at the art school, and of his tutor, Mr Charles Stevenson (Leeds Mercury, 13 Nov 1928):
I used to be the bane of that man’s life and he often told me I was a perfect nuisance about the place. I expect I was. But since then I have thought a good deal about his teaching, and come to realise what a sound man he was.
Edward was in the final stage of his art school course when the 1914-18 was declared. He immediately enlisted and served in France in the trenches as a Private with the Prince of Wales (West Yorkshire) Regiment. The war had a big impact on his life, turning him from being, as he saw it, ‘an idle young man’, to one who saw ‘men fall dead beside him’, and making him realise that he had so far in life ‘accomplished nothing’ (Leeds Mercury, 13 Nov 1928).
Whilst in the trenches, Eric wrote to the distinguished sculptor, James Thomas, at that time a professor at the Slade Art School in London, asking to be considered for an opportunity to study sculpture there after the war.
Thomas wrote back and advised him to draw everything he saw in the trenches around him, which Edward did. (The Sphere, 18 Dec 1926).
Edward survived the war, and after he was demobilised in 1918, contacted Thomas again at the Slade, showed him his portfolio of war sketches, and was immediately accepted to study sculpture at the college for a year.
At the Slade, Edward threw himself into his studies, but also, as a source of income, began making pencil portraits of influential contacts he had made in London through the art school. He quickly found himself in demand for these after he had drawn well-received portraits of Lord Harcourt and Lord Cranford respectively. A short film was made in 1923 of Lacey at work on a portrait of Lady Diana Duff that was later shown at cinemas in London and elsewhere. This reinforced his reputation as a portrait artist, particularly among the upper social circles in London.
He also taught himself drypoint etching and printing in order to produce prints of his etchings These sold well as signed limited editions to collectors through London art dealers. This supported his studies and later supplemented his irregular income from commissioned sculptures.
(Image above: ‘The Drypointer’. Edward Lacey’s self-portrait of himself as a harassed engraver! . From The Studio, 1935, p.235 )
By 1924, Edward had established a London studio at Albert Street, Camden, and had developed a reputation as a talented young sculptor and etcher.
Edward Lacey at work in his studio working on commissions; above seen working on a portrait sculpture of Mr Duncan Guthrie. (Images: from The Studio, August 1935, pp.86-7)
In 1922 he was commissioned to make a bronze sculptural bust of the socialist and community activist, Henry Mayers Hyndman, who had died the previous year. This was cast in dark bronze by Ercole Parlanti and and later gifted by Hyndman’s widow, Rosalind, to the National Portrait Gallery (see image below). A copy was also cast and is now in the National Museum of Labour History. He also made a posthumous bronze bust of Rosalind Hyndman, later shown at the Royal Academy show in 1925.
Bronze bust of Henry Mayers Hyndman,. Image: National Portrait Galery
In 1925-6 he received commissions to make a sculptural death mask of the recently deceased Soviet Chargé d’Affaires in London, as well to make a bust in bronze of the actress, Margaret Bannerman, an admirer and collector of his work.
Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Edward was showing his sculptures and etchings at a range of prestigious exhibitions in London, Manchester and Glasgow. These included the Annual Exhibition of the International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers, London Exhibition, 1925; the Manchester Art Federation, Fine & Applied Art Exhibition, 1924; and at the RCA: Royal Academy of Arts (Summer Exhibition) 1924. He was to exhibit a total of 16, mainly bronze portrait busts, on eight occasions at RCA shows between 1924 – 1955. He also exhibited at The Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts Annual Exhibition, 1936 ( MPPSBI, 2020).
‘Moppett’. Drypoint engraving by Edward Lacey. In a private collection.
His personality may well have contributed to his success, particularly outside the art world, as he did not live up to the popular stereotype of an artist. The Leeds Mercury reporter described him in 1928, as a ‘young man with rumpled hair, restless eyes and a kind of suppressed violence about him’ and who ‘has a violent dislike for all sorts of things that typical artists go in for – Bohemian parties, for instance, and impressionism, and especially discussions about art.’
‘The Young Sculptor’ (possibly a self-portrait). Image: in a private collection.
During the 1930s onward he moved to a number of addresses in South London and in this period continued to work on commissioned work. This included in 1937 a bust of F.W. Sanderson, the progressive Headmaster of Oundle School, Northampton. Edward often travelled to Europe to draw and was nearly caught in Brittany by the sudden German advance in 1940.
In 1949, he exhibited some sculptural works for the first time in his home city, Bradford, at Cartwright Hall, leading to good local reviews and an invitation to return for a solo show.
In 1950 he staged a solo exhibition of sculptures and etchings at Cartwright Hall. The art critic from the Bradford Observer (12/11/1949), in an interview with Edward before the show, noted that:
In his sculpture he is moving slowly and imperctibly from the classical to the abstract, but lovers of traditional art need not have qualms on this point – for he is not a man to make any sudden or savage changes in his work.
The journalist noted, approvingly, that the artist had ‘begun to use striking greens and blues in natural oxide’ in the sculptural works, and was also working in walnut wood, as well as stone. After the show Edward was made a Honorary Member of Bradford Art Club.
Edward Lacey, second right, shows one of bronze sculptures to the mayor and mayoress of Bradford at his 1950 Cartwright Hall solo exhibition.
Edward married three times and had three daughters and a son from the marriages, and at the time of his death was living at Lavender House, a listed building, in the Old Town area of Hastings, East Sussex.
Reference: MPPSBI: Mapping the Practice and Profession of Sculpture in Britain and Ireland 1851-1951, University of Glasgow History of Art and HATII (Edward Lacey) online database 2011 [http://sculpture.gla.ac.uk/view/person.php?id=msib5_1227706927, accessed 10 Sep 2020]