Richard Lockwood Boulton

Born 1832 (Presumed)
Died 23 January 1905

Active: 1851 - 1893

Country of birth and death: England

Sculptor, architectural sculptor, stonemason

Born in Thornton Dale, Yorkshire and baptised on 1 December 1832. His father was Richard Boulton (born c.1796 in Yorkshire), a mason. Richard's older brother, William Boulton (also born Thornton Dale, Yorkshire c.1822), was a sculptor who in 1851 was a master employing 19 men in Southwark, London. Richard either worked for or with his brother and then moved to the Midlands in the second half of the 1850s.

Boulton was initially based in Birmingham from where he carried out a series of important sculptural schemes for the architect Sir George Gilbert Scott in Worcester, Hereford and Lichfield cathedrals. The architect E.W. Godwin was another important early employer and he later claimed to have been responsible for training Boulton. Around 1870-1 Boulton settled in Cheltenham where he established a very successful workshop. His apprentices and employees included Herbert Henry Martyn, Alfred Emms and Robert Lyndsey Clark who later enjoyed considerable success as architectural sculptors in their own right.

Richard's sons became sculptors and stone carvers working for the family business: Lockwood Dutson Boulton (1857-1927) and Thomas Dutson Boulton (1860-1932) who were both born in Birmingham and Gilbert Dutson Boulton (1865-1936) and Frank Cowley Boulton (c.1877-?) both born in Cheltenham. The four sons inherited the firm on their father's retirement in 1893 and were working together at the time of their father's death in 1905 (the firm continued to be active until at least 1971).

In 1862 Richard wrote a letter to the 'Building News' to protest at the criticism of his carvings on Worcester Cathedral. He worked extensively throughout the south west of England and also completed works abroad. His most important commissions include: Winchester Cathedral; sculpture for the Courts of Justice, Bombay; the municipal buildings in Birmingham; Northampton Town Hall; Keble College, Oxford; and the Louvre, Paris.

This record includes information from Joan Brocklebank, 'Victorian Stone Carvers in Dorset Churches 1856-1880', The Dovecote Press, Wimborne, 1979, pp. 28-9 and from the obituary 'Mr. R. L. Boulton' in The Cheltenham Examiner, 25 January 1905, p. 3.

Wealth at death: £15,199 6s. 8d.
Probate date: 28 February 1905

Citing this record

'Richard Lockwood Boulton', 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=msib4_1212053142, accessed 02 Dec 2020]