Edward Onslow Ford RA was an English sculptor. Much of Ford’s early success came with portrait heads or busts. These were considered extremely refined, showing his subjects at their best and led to him receiving a number of commissions for public monuments and statues, both in Britain and overseas. Ford also produced a number of bronze statuettes of free-standing figures loosely drawn from mythology or of allegorical subjects. These ‘ideal’ figures became characteristic of the New Sculpture movement that developed in Britain from about 1880 and of which Ford was a leading exponent. Ford was born at Islington in north London, the son of a businessman Edward Ford and Martha Lydia Gardner. His family moved to Blackheath while he was still a child. After he had spent some time at Blackheath Proprietary School, he went to Antwerp to study painting at Royal Academy of Fine Arts there during 1870 and 1871.1 Ford then studied under Michael Wagmüller in Munich until 1874, during which time he shared a studio with the sculptor Edwin Roscoe Mullins. Before leaving Munich, Ford married a fellow student Anne Gwendoline, the third daughter of Baron Frans von Kreusser, in 1873. On returning to England around 1874, Ford settled at Blackheath and established a studio concentrating on portrait sculptures. In 1875, he submitted a portrait bust he had sculpted of his wife to the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in London. From 1875 to 1884 Ford exhibited portrait sculptures each year at the Academy. Much of Ford’s early success came in portraiture. His portrait busts are extremely refined and show his subjects at their best. He sculpted many portrait busts which are noted for their tasteful conception, delicate modelling, and verisimilitude. The best, perhaps, are the heads of John Everett Millais, Thomas Huxley, Herbert Spencer, Sir WQ Orchardson, Matthew Ridley Corbet, the duke of Norfolk, Briton Rivière, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Sir Walter Armstrong, Sir Hubert von Herkomer, Arthur Hacker (1894), and M. Dagnan-Bouveret. Those in bronze of his fellow-artist Arthur Hacker (1894) and of the politician Arthur Balfour are striking likenesses, as is the marble statue of Sir Frederick Bramwell for the Royal Institution. In 1881 Ford moved his studio operation to Sydney Mews, among a block of studios off the Fulham Road. Alfred Gilbert had a neighbouring studio and together they worked on a number of experimental techniques, notably in lost wax casting which Ford would use throughout his career. Around 1900, following an extended period of over-work and stress from financial worries, Ford developed heart disease but continued working at pace and died suddenly at his home in St John’s Wood on 23 December 1901 Ford’s obituary in The Sketch, dated 1 January 1902, states that he died of pneumonia exacerbated by a weak heart. However the suddenness of his death, and his debt issues, led to some speculation about suicide. He was survived by his mother, his wife, four sons, and a daughter. Two of his sons had worked with Ford in his studio and they completed some of the works left unfinished in his studio, most notably the marble sculpture, Snowdrift. His salt cellar, in silver, ivory, marble and lapis lazuli, of St George and the Dragon was completed by John Seymour Lucas. A monument was erected to Ford’s memory which was designed by the architect J W Simpson and sculpted by Ford’s former studio assistant Andrea Carlo Lucchesi in St John’s Wood, near his home. The monument comprises a stone pillar with a bronze seated figure in mourning at the front, based on Ford’s statue The Muse of Poetry, and a wreathed bust of Ford at rear. The Henry Moore Foundation in Leeds holds an archive of Ford’s papers and correspondence. Several national collections in Britain hold examples of Ford’s work, notably the Tate, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the National Portrait Gallery in London, the Lady Lever Art Gallery on Merseyside and the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool.