Jim Mathieson; Madame Tussaud's sculptor; Times of London
Hyfler/Rosner
Sculptor who came late to his art but, with the help of Madame
Tussaud's, devoted himself to it
If an infinite capacity for taking pains is the sign of genius,
then Jim Mathieson fitted the definition. His attention to the detail and
finish of his bronzes was legendary and heaven help the founder or fettler
who did not meet his high standards.
He came late to sculpture and was 34 before he took up full-time
training, first at the Sir John Cass School and then for four years at the
City and Guilds of London Art School. After graduating, Mathieson held a
part-time lectureship there for ten years and then, in 1979, took the brave
decision to relinquish teaching and to give his whole time to sculpting.
This mainly involved work for private portrait commissions and
figure sculpture. He was helped by a series of commissions between 1984 and
1998 from Madame Tussaud's, for which he modelled Darcey Bussell, Oprah
Winfrey and other international personalities. His most ambitious public
sculpture was a bronze statue, at one-and-a-quarter lifesize, of the painter
William Hogarth and his dog Trump. The statue was unveiled before a large
crowd in Chiswick, West London, in 2001 by Ian Hislop, Editor of Private
Eye, who was assisted by the artist David Hockney.
The statue was described at the ceremony as "a brilliant
sculpture - in fact, a triumph" by the painter Peter Blake. It bears
favourable comparison with the image of Sir Joshua Reynolds by Alfred Drury
at the Royal Academy. Both painters are shown in the act of painting and
Mathieson's Hogarth, with its lack of swagger and intent concentration on
the act of painting, is perhaps the more convincing depiction of character
and personality.
In 1990 Mathieson began to make "a series of abstract sculptures
trying to capture the idea of sexuality in plants and animals". He described
himself as "basically a naturalist who reduces human, animal and plant forms
to arrive at an essence of an idea that transcends realism". He saw the
development of these works as analogous to evolution in the natural world
and he called them "an evolutionary family constantly changing and evolving
into new forms".
Mathieson was content to pursue his search remote from galleries
and dealers and happy to have enough money coming in from his portraiture to
enable him to continue. He wrote: "My full-time occupation with sculpture is
an obsession, and is done with a sense of love in creating something
tangible. If I can make a few sculptures that genuinely satisfy certain
criteria I hold dear . . . it will all have been worthwhile."
Mathieson was by no means the solitary that such a statement
might imply. He was a warm family man. His sculptural enthusiasms were
catholic; Rodin, Brancusi and Arp were among his favourite sculptors and The
Garden of Earthly Delights by Bosch was his favourite painting. He was an
active and much valued senior member of the Society of Portrait Sculptors
and retained to the end his energy, good humour and an enviably youthful
appearance, despite suffering from cancer.
He married, in 1959, Edna Skinner; the marriage was dissolved in
1976. He married, in 1981, Judith Craig. She survives him, with a daughter
from his first marriage.
Jim Mathieson, sculptor, was born in 1931. He died on April 12,
2003, aged 72.
