Antony Dufort

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Antony Dufort FRSS (born 1948) is an English artist and sculptor. His commissioned works stand at locations in Britain.

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Life

"Testing for Gas" in Silverhill Wood Country Park Silverhill miner.jpg
"Testing for Gas" in Silverhill Wood Country Park

Dufort's maternal grandmother Doris de Halpert, an artist who had studied under Walter Sickert, gave him lessons in drawing and painting. He studied history at New College, Oxford; at Chelsea School of Art he gained a diploma in art and design, and a master's degree in fine art, and he attended a postgraduate art teacher's course at Goldsmiths' College. After working as a film storyboard artist and illustrator, he began a career as a sculptor. [1] [2] He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Sculptors, and a Council member of the Society of Portrait Sculptors. [3]

Works

Bronze statue of Margaret Thatcher, in the Members' Lobby of the House of Commons Thatcher for the members' lobby of the House of Commons 2005.jpg
Bronze statue of Margaret Thatcher, in the Members' Lobby of the House of Commons

Dufort's works include the following:

An over-life size bronze statue of a bowler, at Lord's Cricket Ground in London, commissioned by the MCC, was unveiled in 2002. [1] [4]

"Testing for Gas", unveiled in 2005, is in Silverhill Wood Country Park near Sutton-in-Ashfield, Nottinghamshire. It is on high ground, a former spoil heap of Silverhill Colliery, which closed in the 1990s. The over life-size bronze statue, on a rock plinth, shows a kneeling coal miner testing for methane gas. It was commissioned by Nottinghamshire County Council to commemorate the Nottinghamshire mining industry. [1] [5] [6]

Baroness Margaret Thatcher unveiled an over life-size bronze statue of herself, in the Members' Lobby of the Palace of Westminster, London, in 2007. It was commissioned by the Speaker's Advisory Committee on Works of Art. [1] [7] [8] [9]

A portrait of Britannia was created for the reverse of the £2 Coin of 2015; 650,000 coins were minted. [10]

A frieze in high-relief, showing miners escaping from a flooded mine, was unveiled in Cinderford in the Forest of Dean in 2022. It is a memorial marking the rescue of 182 miners from Waterloo Colliery in 1949, and was commissioned by Forest of Dean District Council and Cinderford Labour Party. Dufort said: "When I came to the Forest of Dean about 40 years ago all of my neighbours were all miners or from miners' families." [1] [11]

A memorial to the mathematician George Boole was unveiled outside the railway station in Lincoln in 2022. It was commissioned by the Heslam Trust. Boole, born in Lincoln, is shown as a teacher with two pupils. [12] [13]

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Silverhill, Nottinghamshire</span>

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The Welsh National and Universal Mining Disaster Memorial Garden at Senghenydd, Caerphilly, commemorates the 439 men killed in the Senghenydd colliery disaster of 1913, the worst mining accident in British history; the 81 lives lost in an earlier pit explosion at Senghenydd in 1901; and acts as a national memorial to all of the dead of the 152 mining disasters that have occurred in Wales. The garden was opened in 2013, the centenary of the 1913 event. In March 2024 Cadw added the garden to its Cadw/ICOMOS Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales. Its listing record describes the garden as "an important site of public commemoration and memory".

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 "Antony Dufort FRSS" Society of Portrait Sculptors. Retrieved 23 March 2024.
  2. ↑ "Antony Dufort" Macconnal-Mason. Retrieved 24 March 2024.
  3. ↑ "Antony Dufort FRSS" Royal Society of Sculptors. Retrieved 23 March 2024.
  4. ↑ "The Bowler" The Sporting Statues Project. Retrieved 23 March 2024.
  5. ↑ "Testing for Gas" Art UK. Retrieved 22 March 2024.
  6. ↑ Ashfield District Council. "Coal mining history" Discover Ashfield. Retrieved 23 March 2024.
  7. ↑ "The Iron Lady commemorated in bronze" NBC News, 22 February 2007. Retrieved 24 March 2024.
  8. ↑ Lucy Mangan. "Why Margaret Thatcher's statue doesn't measure up." The Guardian , 26 February 2007.
  9. ↑ "Baroness Margaret Thatcher" Art UK. Retrieved 23 March 2024.
  10. ↑ "The Rarest UK £2 Coins" The Royal Mint. Retrieved 23 March 2024.
  11. ↑ "Waterloo Colliery Flood: Monument marks miners rescue" BBC, 27 March 2022. Retrieved 23 March 2024.
  12. ↑ "Memorialising George Boole" The Royal Society. Retrieved 24 March 2024.
  13. ↑ "George Boole: Statue to Victorian coder unveiled in Lincoln" BBC, 29 September 2022. Retrieved 24 March 2024.

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