John Bell

Who was John Bell?

John Bell 1811-1895 was a British sculptor, born in Bell's Row, Great Yarmouth, Norfolk. His family home was Hopton Hall, Suffolk.

Bell moved from Suffolk to London to attend the Royal Academy Schools in 1829. His Babes in the Wood was exhibited at the Royal Academy summer exhibition in 1839. Marble versions are held at Osborne House, and Norwich Castle.

In 1844 he entered his Eagle Slayer and Jane Shore in the competition held for sculpture for the new Houses of Parliament. A cast-iron version of the Eagle Slayer was produced for The Great Exhibition of 1851, where it stood under a canopy surmounted by the eagle. This version is now in the V&A Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green.

For Coalbrookdale he created the Deerhound hall table and Andromeda which was bought by Queen Victoria and is now a feature of the gardens at Osborne House.

Una and the Lion, inspired by Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene was also exhibited at the Great Exhibition of 1851, and reproduced in miniature in parian ware by Mintons. The full scale model was placed in the Crystal Palace which burned down in 1936.

His best-known work is the Crimean monument to the "Brigade of Guards" at the junction of Pall Mall and Waterloo Place, London.