WHITE, James (1862-1918)

sculptor

was born at Edinburgh in 1862, and came to Australia while a young man. He won the Wynne prize at Sydney in 1902 and executed a large number of statues and memorials in Australia, including the Queen Victoria memorial and the Fitzgibbon statue at Melbourne, statues of George Bass, Daniel Henry Deniehy, Sir John Robertson and W. B. Dalley at Sydney, the John McDouall Stuart statue at Adelaide, South African war memorials at Perth and Ballarat and statues of Queen Victoria and George Lansell at Bendigo. In spite of this long list White was by no means a distinguished sculptor. He came to Australia when there were few sculptors there of ability, and it must be presumed that his sketch models were better than his finished works, as in later years he more than once obtained important commissions in competition with better men. He died in 1918. His head of an Australian aboriginal is at the national gallery at Sydney.

W. Moore, The Story of Australian Art; Catalogue of the National Art Gallery of N.S.W.