Thomas Woolner was born in Hadleigh, Suffolk, England on 17 December 1825. In c.1830 he moved with his family to London and in c.1837. At an early age he showed an ability in drawing and modelling and in c.1838 became a pupil of the painter Charles Behnes (?-1840). Following the death of the latter, Woolner joined the studio of his brother, the portrait sculptor William Behnes (1795-1864) at Osnaburgh Street, Regent's Park, London and remained with Behnes for about six years. In December 1842, while still employed by Behnes and with his encouragement, Woolner enrolled at the Royal Academy Schools in London. The following year he exhibited for the first time at the Royal Academy with a model of Eleanor sucking the Poison from the arm of Prince Edward. He subsequently exhibited regularly at the RA throughout his life. In 1845 Woolner made an impression when he was awarded a silver medal by the Society of Arts in 1845 for his relief Affection.

In 1847 he became acquainted with Dante Gabriel Rossetti. and in 1848, with him and John Everett Millais and William Holman Hunt, joined the Cyclographic Society (Cyclographic Club), a short-lived sketching club in London. The four bonded and, with three other young artists, who were members of the Club, formed the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood that year. Woolner, who was also a poet, provided a poem ‘Our Beautiful Lady’, for the first issue of the PRB's journal 'The Germ' in January 1850.

During the early years of his career, Woolner faced considerable financial difficulties, and because of insufficient sales of his work and a lack of commissions he decided to try his hand at gold prospecting in Australia to where he emigrated in 1852. Although he found some gold in Australia it wasn't sufficient to make it worth his while continuing prospecting, which he soon abandoned. However, he received commissions for several portrait medallions of Australian colonists, including one of Charles Joseph Latrobe, the first lieutenant-governor of Victoria, and painted a portrait of Sir Charles FitzRoy, Governor of New South Wales. Woolmer had hoped to secure a major commission to make a statue of the Australian statesman and explorer William Charles Wentworth, and in order to press his case, and possibly because of a failed love affair, went back to England in 1854. Despite the success of an earlier medallion of Wentworth, Woolner was not awarded the commission.

Following his return to England, Woolner's fortunes improved as he began to receive more commissions. The year 1857 was a turning point in his career. His busts and medallions of Alfred Tennyson, Thomas Carlyle, and Robert Browning, and his statue of Francis Bacon for the new Oxford University Museum, all executed in 1857, established his reputation as a portrait sculptor. It also led to a plethora of commissions over the next two decades [1]. These included statues of Thomas Babington Macaulay (1866), Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1875), John Stuart Mill (1878), and Queen Victoria (1883), busts of Sir James Brooke, Rajah of Sarawak (1858-59), Arthur Hugh Clough (1863), Richard Cobden (1865 and 1866), Cardinal John Henry Newman (1866), William Ewart Gladstone (1866), and Charles Dickens (1872); medallions of Emily Tennyson (1859), Sir Francis Palgrave (1861), Charles Darwen (1869), and Dr. Charles Tyndall (1876); funerary monuments for Sir William Hooker (1865), William Dobson (1870) and Charles Kingsley (1876); and architectural sculpture for Alfred Waterhouse’s Manchester Assize Courts, consisting of eleven marble statues and two reliefs (1863-67).

In addition to exhibiting regularly at the Royal Academy in London, Wooner exhibited at the Aberdeen Artists' Society; The Royal Scottish Academy; and at Manchester City Art Gallery. He also participated in the International Exhibition of Arts and Manufactures in Dublin, in 1865, and the Exhibition of Arts, Industries and Manufactures in Dublin in 1872.

He was elected a member of the Institute of British Sculptors in 1861; an Associate of the Royal Academy (ARA) in 1871 and a Royal Academician (RA) 1874. He was appointed Professor of Sculpture at the Royal Academy in 1877 but resigned two years later without having delivered a lecture there.

Woolner died at his home, 29 Welbeck Street, London, 7 October 1892.

_{Text source: Art History Research net (AHR net)}