‘The Man of Loos’ was sculpted by Paul Rafael Montford soon after the end of the First World War to depict the famous occasion when men of the London Irish Rifles kicked a football across the battlefield into German trenches on the first day of the Battle of Loos on 25 September 1915.
Paul Raphael Montford (1 November 1868 – 15 January 1938) was an English-born sculptor, also active in Australia and was the winner of the gold medal of the Royal Society of British Sculptors in 1934.
Paul Montford was born in Kentish Town, London, the son of Horace Montford, a sculptor, and his wife Sarah Elizabeth, née Lewis. Montford married Marian Alice Dibdin (daughter of W. J. Dibdin) a capable oil-painter, on 11 September 1912.
Sculpting commissions in England were scarce after the First World War so Montford decided to go to Australia in 1923 believing the light would be favourable to sculpture. He had difficulty in getting commissions and taught at the Gordon Technical College in Geelong, Victoria, in July 1924 exhibited at the Geelong Art Gallery, and became president of the Victorian Artists’ Society in 1930.
In Australia, there are approximately seventy works by Montford. He provided a model from which a portrait bust of Socrates was carved by Victor Wager in 1932, for the University of Western Australia. Montford was the subject for his wife, Marion’s, winning entry in the 1931 Archibald Prize.
In 1937 Montford joined Robert Menzies’ anti-modernist organisation, the Australian Academy of Art as a foundation member but died before its first exhibition.
(Courtesy of Wikipedia).
Bust (1913) of Henry Campbell-Bannerman in Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum by Paul Rafael Montford.