Robert P. Kiddey

Born 21 May 1900
Died 1984

Active: 1926 - 1951

Country of birth and death: England

Sculptor, teacher, architectural sculptor

Born in Nottingham. Died at Hawtonville Hospital, Newark, Nottinghamshire. Kiddey studied at Nottingham School of Art before and after the First World War. He was appointed as a teacher of sculpture at Newark County Technical College in 1931 (or 1932) and taught there for fifty years. He made a number of works in the area, including: four carved stone panels for the exterior of the college, a frieze for Newark Rowing Club's boathouse, Devon Bridge, and a large wood carving, 'Flight into Egypt', for Southwell Minster.*

His family have submitted the following biographical note: "Robert Kiddey was a short, dapper man who wore a trilby and was a local celebrity. During WW1 he joined the Bantam Brigade as a motorcycle messenger, being too short at just over 5 foot to fight at the Front. Kiddey has many works in the former USSR including The Hermitage which [at the time of writing] is poorly catalogued making it hard to identify works in the collection. [When Kiddey was working] Socialist Realism was the order of the day. He exhibited at the Paris Salon several times. During one exhibition his work was stolen which infuriated him. Kiddey has works in the University of Nottingham, regional religious houses, and at Southwell Minster. As a committed atheist/socialist it is remarkable he won so many religious commissions. Newark was his home town and the Council has a massive set of stone relief panel figures which formed exterior decor on the now demolished Wilford Power station. He worked on the frieze and Left Lion on/in Nottingham's City Council building on Market Square. All of this work was attributed to Charles Else... Kiddey lived an aesthetic life in an unheated former school house and had a menage a trois, possibly sexless but who can tell? All we know is that the family were later pressed to visit 'Maude' in South London with gifts/flowers on his behalf who was then in a care home. She had obviously been a beauty in her youth. The family has donated several works by Kiddey and his full archive to Newark's Spotlight Gallery." The project is very grateful to the Kiddey family for submitting this evocative account of his life to the project.

*Information from 'News', 24 April, 1934, in the Nottingham Local Artists Card Index, City Archives, Nottingham and Newark Advertiser http://www.newarkadvertiser.co.uk/featurecontent/history/tim-warner/warner99.asp]

Citing this record

'Robert P. Kiddey', 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_1227270927, accessed 29 Sep 2023]

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