James Edgar Winter

Born 1868 (Circa)
Died 20 June 1938

Active: 1891 - 1931

Country of birth: Scotland

Country of death: Northern Ireland

Sculptor, wood carver

Born in Cromarty, Scotland. He was the son of John Winter (born c.1831 in Ireland), a Battery Sergeant Major in the Royal Artillery. James was probably trained in carving in Glasgow (or elsewhere in Scotland) as his family was living in the city around 1881 after his father became an army pensioner. In the early 1890s James was working as a wood carver in Chester. It is likely he was either contracted to a local firm or was sent there by an employer, perhaps whichever carver had trained him in Scotland. He relocated to Holywood, Co. Down (probably before 1897 when he married Mary Anne from Ballydugan Co. Down) and established a successful practice as a sculptor and wood carver in Belfast. Winter was still living in Holywood at the time of his death (based on information in the Belfast Newsletter, 22 June 1938, p. 6.)

Between 1903-6 there was a firm entitled Winter and Thompson, which may have been a partnership between James Edgar Winter and the stone carver, Edmund T. Thompson (born c.1877). Winter advertised his work in the Irish Builder around 1906 offering: 'Fonts, Monuments, Altars, Pulpits, Lecterns and Church Furnishings, & c.; Plaster Centres, Corbels, Busts; also cement work'. (The Irish Builder, Nov. 17th, 1906.)

Winter's early commissions included: Ocean Buildings, Donegal Square East (1899-1902); carved work at Whitla Medical Institute (1902) and Oldpark Library, Belfast (1905-6). (There are images of these works at http://www.victorianweb.org/art/architecture/misc/38b.html.) Other projects included the wood carving contract for Belfast City Hall, a contract shared with Purdy and Millard (1906).

Winter worked regularly for Young and MacKenzie. Among the commissions he received from these architects were carvings of Belfast Arms for fire brigade stations at Crumlin Road (1902) and Albertbridge Road, Belfast (1903). (See Larmour, 'Belfast: an illustrated architectural guide', pp. 65 and 69).

This entry includes information supplied by Emma McVeigh.

Citing this record

'James Edgar Winter', Mapping the Practice and Profession of Sculpture in Britain and Ireland 1851-1951, University of Glasgow History of Art and HATII, online database 2011 [http://sculpture.gla.ac.uk/view/person.php?id=msib3_1216043022, accessed 01 Apr 2023]