Reginald Butler
Born 1913
Died 1981
Active: 1937 - 1981
Country of birth and death: England
Sculptor, teacher, architect
Born Buntingford, Hertfordshire. Worked in iron, modelled and cast bronze and later fibreglass. Trained as architect, A.R.I.B.A. 1937. Practised as architect (as Cotterell Butler) until 1939. Conscientious objector, worked as blacksmith in Iping, West Sussex 1941-45, and industrial technologist and technical editor to 1950. Sculptor from 1944. Taught at Slade School of Fine Art from 1951-80. Gregory Fellow at University of Leeds 1950-53. Won Grand Prize in UPP 1953. John Read’s film about the sculptor shown on BBC TV 1959.
Commissions include: The Oracle for Hatfield Technical College 1952.
Exhibitions include: Hanover Gallery 1949, 54, 57, 60 (solos) ; SB 1951; VB 1952 and 1954; The New Decade, Museum of Modern Art, New York 1955; LCC 1951, 57, 60; AC 1957, 58, 60, 61; BC 1956; BCSP 1957; SPB 57; Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York 1959; NIMOMA 1959; Curt Valentin Gallery, New York, 1955 (solo); Galerie Springer, Berlin, 1957 (solo).
Collections include: Tate; Arts Council; Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York.
Further reading: R. Butler, Creative Development : five lectures to art students, London, 1962.
Reg Butler, a Retrospective Exhibition, J.B.Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky, 22 October – 1 December 1963, (exh.cat.).
R. Calvocoressi and J. Davies, Reg Butler, Tate Gallery, London, 16 November 1983 – 15 January 1984, (exh. cat. includes extensive lists of periodical and newspaper articles on Unknown Political Prisoner Competition).
Biography from Whiteley (2001) with additional information from Read (2004)
Wealth at death: £33,954 0s. 0d.
Probate date: 25 October 1982
Exhibitions, Meetings, Awards and other Events
Exhibited at Festival of Britain, London: Ten Decades, a Review of British Taste, 1851-1951, 1951
1951
Butler exhibited a wrought iron work entitled 'Woman'. This was lent by E. C. Gregory.
Institutional and Business Connections
Teacher at Slade School of Fine Art
September 1950
Listed as an assistant teacher. The type of course is not specified but this was probably sculpture. Butler is still listed as a teacher at the school in the 1951-1952 prospectus, the last volume sampled for this project.
Personal and Professional Connections
Employed as studio assistant Rosemary Young
1954
From
Wife/husband/spouse to Rosemary Young
Sources
Directory of sculptors working and exhibiting in Britain in the 1950s, by Gillian Whiteley
2001
pp. 5-6
London County Council Central School of Arts and Crafts. Prospectus and Time-Table for the Session 1950-1951
September 1950 (Presumed)
p. lxxii.
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
2004
John Read, ‘Butler, Reginald Cotterell (1913–1981)’, rev. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 ;online edn, May 2006 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/30885, accessed 25 July 2010]
Citing this record
'Reginald Butler', 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_1253799883, accessed 09 Feb 2023]
