John Tweed: Sculpting the Empire

John Tweed (1869-1933) was a hugely successful artist who, during his lifetime, became known as ‘The Empire Sculptor’. After training at the Glasgow School of Art, he moved to London and then spent six months in Paris. There he met August Rodin and went on to become his principal agent and friend in England. Tweed worked at the very heart of the London art world and created lasting images of many leading Victorian and Edwardian figures such as Cecil Rhodes and Lord Kitchener. His legacy of public sculptures is to be found ranged across the British Empire. This is the first book to consider John Tweed’s place in art history and is the result of a four-year project to catalogue the sculptor’s archive at Reading Museum.