Alan, Unfinished Head in Clay

clay (height) 10 in 25.4 cm

Private Collection

Information

The Ondaatje Prize For Portraiture, 2002

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Further reading

Yeoman did not study sculpture when he was a student at the RA schools. He attended Morley College a little later on in his career, and it was here that he was shown the basics of modelling in clay.

The RA School's barrel-vaulted corridor was punctuated under Peter Greenham's direction with plaster casts of the antique, from the early Greeks and Roman to Michelangelo and Donatello and up to Lord Leighton. There were no set lessons to study these casts but Yeoman and a few other fellow students who loved them took it upon themselves to make drawings of them, in Yeoman's case an 8ft x 5ft oil of the corridor with the Pieta and the figure of Hermes.

It was the artist's of the 19th century who excelled at so many mediums, and Yeoman took his inspiration for modelling from, in particular, the French School.