Sculptor and lecturer, born in Calcutta, India, where he attended the Lawrence Royal Military School, Simla. The family moved to Britain in 1946, initially settled in Arbroath, where Jim and his older brother David began apprenticeships as toolmakers, then in London. His father refused to fund art studies, so from 1946–9 Mathieson attended Westminster College of Commerce; completed his National Service with the Gordon Highlanders, serving in intelligence in Germany; in 1952 joining the North British and Mercantile Insurance Company. He decided to become a psychotherapist, obtaining O- and A-levels, but his political activities undermined this aim. He was a member of the anti-nuclear Committee of 100 and Communist Party, being arrested and imprisoned.
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Having begun part-time sculpture classes at Sir John Cass School of Art in 1964, in 1965 he quit insurance and completed a four-year diploma course at City and Guilds School of Art. While a student, he was chosen to cast the Prince of Wales’s crown for the crowning ceremony at Caernarvon Castle. Mathieson had begun part-time lecturing in sculpture at Sir John Cass and continued to teach there and at Ealing School of Art, 1969–79. He had a show at the Archer Gallery in 1972, took part in numerous mixed ones, including the RA Summer Exhibition and as a member with SPS, began to get commissions and from 1979 opted to sculpt full-time. After his first marriage was dissolved, in 1981 he married Judith Craig, head of the portrait studio at Madame Tussaud’s waxworks museum, and between 1984–98 was commissioned to model portraits, heads and figures. A ruthless self-critic, Mathieson twice destroyed the contents of his studio to make way for new work. A high point in his career was his bronze statue of the painter William Hogarth and his dog, unveiled in Chiswick in 2001. He died in London. There was a retrospective at the Milton Gallery, St Paul’s School, in 2005.
Text source: 'Artists in Britain Since 1945' by David Buckman (Art Dictionaries Ltd, part of Sansom & Company)
