in 1848, and ‘Titania and the Indian Boy’ at the British Institution in the same year. He now, however, from the lack of encouragement for idealistic sculpture, devoted himself chiefly to portrait medallions. Among these was one of Carlyle, to whom and to Mrs. Carlyle he became greatly attached. He also, through Coventry Patmore, made the acquaintance of Tennyson. A visit to him at Coniston in the autumn of 1850 led to his executing the medallion of Wordsworth now in Grasmere church. He also competed for a monument to the poet, and produced a fine seated figure, with a spirited bas-relief in illustration of ‘Peter Bell’ upon the pedestal. The design, which is engraved in Professor Knight's edition of Wordsworth, was not accepted, and Woolner, weary of ill success, embraced, in common with many other struggling Englishmen, the idea of trying his fortune at the Australian goldfields. He sailed for Melbourne on 24 July 1852, accompanied by two friends, one, Mr. Latrobe Bateman, nephew to the governor of Victoria. The Rossettis, Madox Brown, and Holman Hunt accompanied him on board, and his exodus inspired Madox Brown's noble picture, ‘The Last of England.’ He arrived at Melbourne in October, and in November proceeded to the diggings, his object being to provide sufficient resources to tide him over the first difficulties of the artistic career which he looked forward for a time to following in Melbourne or Sydney. He could procure, however, little beyond a bare livelihood, and, upon establishing himself at Melbourne in the following May, found himself obliged to depend solely upon his professional exertions. These were not unfruitful. At Melbourne he executed a medallion of Governor Latrobe, and at Sydney fine portraits of the governor-general, Sir Charles Fitzroy, and of the father of Australian self-government, William Charles Wentworth [q. v.] A colossal statue of Wentworth was to have been executed, but the money was ultimately devoted to endowing a fellowship in Sydney University, much to the disappointment of Woolner, who had returned to England hoping to obtain the commission. He arrived in October 1854. On the way home he read a pathetic story of a fisherman, which he imparted to Tennyson, who founded ‘Enoch Arden’ upon it. The plot of ‘Aylmer's Field’ also was derived from him.
During Woolner's absence a great improvement had taken place in the position of English art and artists. Ruskin and the pre-Raphaelites between them had raised the standard of taste, and several friends whom Woolner had left poor and struggling were now celebrities. The turning-point of his career may be said to have been the fine bust of Tennyson, now in the library of Trinity College, executed in 1857. In the same year he exhibited the celebrated medallion portraits of the laureate and of Thomas Carlyle, and one equally fine of Robert Browning. The statue of Bacon in the New Oxford Museum was also executed in this year; and in 1858 Woolner modelled in alto-relievo figures of Moses, David, St. John the Baptist, and St. Paul for the pulpit of Llandaff Cathedral, then under restoration, for which Rossetti also laboured.
From this time Woolner's position was assured, and the history of the remainder of his life is little else than the chronicle of his successes. In 1861 he was commissioned to design and model the colossal Moses and other sculptures for the assize courts, Manchester. Among his most remarkable works were Constance and Arthur, children of Sir Thomas Fairbairn, 1862; Mrs. Archibald Peel and son, in Wrexham church, 1867, and in the same year a mother and child for Sir Walter Trevelyan; bust of Gladstone in the Bodleian Library, with three splendid bas-reliefs from the ‘Iliad,’ 1868; ‘In Memoriam,’ children in Paradise, 1870; Virgilia, wife of Coriolanus, 1871; ‘Guinevere,’ 1872; monument to Mrs. James Anthony Froude, in St. Lawrence Church, Ramsgate, 1875; ‘Godiva,’ 1876. Among the colossal and life-size statues the most important are: John Robert Godley, for Christ Church, Canterbury, New Zealand, 1865; Lord Macaulay, for Trinity College, 1866; Sir Bartle Frere, for Bombay, 1872; Dr. Whewell, Trinity College, 1873; Lord Lawrence, Calcutta, 1875; John Stuart Mill, Thames Embankment, 1878; Captain Cook, Sydney, 1879; Sir Stamford Raffles, Singapore, 1887; Bishop Fraser, Manchester, 1888. Among busts of distinguished men, besides those already mentioned, may be named the bearded bust of Tennyson, modelled in 1873, and those of Darwin, Newman, Maurice, Keble, Carlyle, Charles Dickens, Kingsley, Sir Hope Grant, Archbishop Temple, Professors Adam Sedgwick and Huxley, Rajah Brooke, and Archdeacon Hare. He also executed recumbent figures of Bishop Jackson in St. Paul's, and of Lord Frederick Cavendish in Cartmel Priory church.
Woolner was elected an associate of the Royal Academy in 1871, and academician in 1874; his diploma work, exhibited in 1876, was an ideal group—‘Achilles and Pallas shouting from the Trenches.’ In 1877, upon the death of Henry Weekes [q. v.], he was
