Portland statue

Eric Winters represented the fifth generation of sculptors in the Winters family, learning to sculpt under the experienced eye of his father Leo Hill Winters, himself a carver. In April 1939, at the age of 18, Winters was awarded the only open scholarship to attend the Royal Academy Sculpture School, where he was the youngest student. He soon proved his competency in the medium, winning four Landseer prizes and representing Great Britain at the Victoria and Albert Museum (1948). Driven by his early success in portraiture and genuine passion for sculpture, Winters was already starting to pave the way for the formation of a new society, even before completing his studies at the Royal Academy Schools. He was a founder member of the Society of Portrait Sculptors, and exhibited regularly from 1952 until his tragically early death aged 47.

Portland statue exemplifies Winters’ competency in direct carving, and demonstrates his talent for revealing hidden form within a block of stone. Winters’ entry into the Royal Academy School came at the end of a decade where carving in Britain had enjoyed somewhat of a renaissance. This was in part thanks to the work of Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth who were exhibiting alongside émigrés such as Piet Mondrian and Naum Gabo, as London established itself as the centre for European avant-garde art. Indeed, this Modernist vernacular informs Winters’ carving in the present sculpture, and we observe influences by the likes of Eric Gill, Jacob Epstein and Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, who had revolutionised carving in Britain prior to the First World War.