Biography

The sculptor Francis Derwent Wood was born in Keswick and educated in Switzerland and Germany. He returned to England in 1889 and attended the National Art Training School under Edouard Lanteri and also worked as an assistant to Alphonse Legros at the Slade School. He entered the Royal Academy Schools in 1894 and won a gold medal and a travelling scholarship with his bronze group of Daedalus and Icarus. He taught at Glasgow School of Art from 1897 to 1901 after which he settled in London. He enlisted in the Royal Army Medical Corps in 1915 where he was in charge of the department of masks for facial wounds. From 1918 to 23 Wood was Professor of Sculpture at the Royal College of Art.