Bob Markham informs us that the Ipswich Museum records state that the memorial portrait of Cardinal Wolsey over the outside entrance of the Art Gallery is the work of sculptor Charles Grimwood of Ipswich. Perhaps it was designed by one person and sculpted by another…

Herbert Charles Grimwood (c.1880-1966) studied at Colchester and in Ireland and became a working manager and marble mason and carver. In 1911 a 30 year old monumental marble mason was living at 39 Cemetery Road with his 29 year old wife Mary and their son, Herbert Henry (1908-1982). Herbert Senior exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1928 when residing at 26 Hervey Street. He was a member of the Ipswich Art Club 1932-1939 and exhibited, from Hervey Street in 1932, two sculptures: the head of a boy 'Peter' and a portrait bust 'Mary'. He was living at 20 Levington Lane, Bucklesham when he died at the Ipswich & East Suffolk Hospital, Anglesea Road on 6 April 1966, aged 88.

So, Grimwood Senior is listed as a marble mason and carver – perhaps making his living mainly from funerary masonry. The mason's business is still there (handily close to the Old Cemetery), but which now appears to be a vegan restaurant called Hullabaloo. The actual work of art must, I think, have come from sculptor Alan Waddington Bellis and came in the form of the maquette for approval by the committee in charge of the Wolsey gallery project. This would then have been handed to the carver for re-creation in stone from the maquette.                    

R.G.

Top: the plaster maquette and above: the portrait as it exists today. See the Newsletter April 2018 for the original article and July 2018 (Letters to the Editor).