Alan Thornhill

Alan Thornhill (1921 – March 4, 2020) was a British artist and sculptor whose long association with clay developed from pottery into sculpture. His output includes pottery, small and large scale sculptures, portrait heads, paintings and drawings. His evolved methods of working enabled the dispensing of the sculptural armature to allow improvisation, whilst his portraiture challenges notions of normality through rigorous observation.

Nine large works now form the Putney Sculpture Trail along the River Thames at Putney in the Borough of Wandsworth, formally opened in September 2008. Load has been on Putney Embankment since 1989.

A 40-minute documentary, produced by his daughter Anna Thornhill, Spirit in Mass: Journey into Sculpture, was released in 2008 with an award from Screen South and UK Film Council. This was launched in Oxford and subsequently appeared at the Appledore Visual Arts Festival 2008 and Chichester International Film Festival. Artist and writer Clare Carswell is interviewed in the film.

The bronze sculpture, Walking and Talking and many of the files and papers relating to Thornhill's portraits were acquired in 2007 by the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds, UK.

He first taught claywork at Kingston, Barking Regional College, Rush Green College of Further Education and then sculpture at Morley College, London between 1970 and 1987, and at the former Frink School of Sculpture where he was a founder trustee and with a later teaching role (1995–2001).

In 1949 he was accepted for the pottery course at Camberwekk under Dick Kendall and Nora Braden, followed by a year at Farnham under Henry Hammond and Paul Barron, before moving in 1951 to Eastcombe, Gloucestershire, where Hawkley Pottery was set up. In 1958, frustrated by the repetition involved in making and selling pots, he started to gravitate towards claywork and sculpture through friendship with established sculptors Lynn Chadwick and Jack Greaves. In 1959 he moved to London, having found a property in Putney which included a semi-derelict outbuilding that became his studio, which still exists. Latterly he was largely based near Stroud, Gloucestershire.

Born in London, he grew up in Fittleworth, West Sussex, attended Radley College, and then in 1939 went to New College to read Modern History. In 1944 he returned to Oxford, having been exempted from military service as a conscientious objector. He obtained his degree, and spent a year in Italy based in Florence, teaching English at Pisa University. He then stayed six months in Oslo undergoing Reichian therapy, from which came the decision to try working with his hands.