Robert Charles Hitchcock (born 18 August 1944) is an Australian sculptor. He commenced his career in 1970 and works in a wide variety of subjects and materials. Hitchcock is one of the leading portrait sculptors currently working in Australia today. He is known for his life size (and super life size) bronze sculptures which are located in private collections as well as public works of art in Australia and overseas.

Early life

Hitchcock was born in

Perth Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia. It is the fourth most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a population of 2.1 million (80% of the state) living in Greater Perth in 2020. Perth i ...

, Western Australia. He is of Irish and

indigenous Australian Indigenous Australians or Australian First Nations are people with familial heritage from, and membership in, the ethnic groups that lived in Australia before British colonisation. They consist of two distinct groups: the Aboriginal peoples ...

descent. In his youth he worked as a carpenter and entered formal study in his early twenties at the Art Department of the Perth Tech College. Whilst he initially wanting to study fine painting in fine art, due to impaired vision (from an accident as a child) he had difficulty in seeing and mixing colours and realised that he had more of an affinity with

three-dimensional Three-dimensional space (also: 3D space, 3-space or, rarely, tri-dimensional space) is a geometric setting in which three values (called ''parameters'') are required to determine the position of an element (i.e., point). This is the informa ...

art. The early sculptures of Hitchcock were exploratory in nature and diverse in technique and style. Subject matter tends towards

realism Realism, Realistic, or Realists may refer to: In the arts *Realism (arts), the general attempt to depict subjects truthfully in different forms of the arts Arts movements related to realism include: *Classical Realism *Literary realism, a move ...

and expressionism of the "continuity of movement in space"Gasser, Mark. "Interview with Robert Hitchcock 2010" and the subjects themselves include natural forms, and realistic modelling of animals and figures in movement. Hitchcock later moved away from this early

(which he sought to create in his sculptures) to a "more stylized and abstract search of forms and planes". After graduating in 1969 he worked in plaster factories (learning plaster piece moulding techniques),

fibreglass Fiberglass (American English) or fibreglass (Commonwealth English) is a common type of fiber-reinforced plastic using glass fiber. The fibers may be randomly arranged, flattened into a sheet called a chopped strand mat, or woven into glass clo ...

factories and various bronze foundries.

Professional career

His first commission came in 1970 of the champion

race horse Horse racing is an equestrian performance sport, typically involving two or more horses ridden by jockeys (or sometimes driven without riders) over a set distance for competition. It is one of the most ancient of all sports, as its basic pr ...

Aquanita, which competed in the

Melbourne Cup The Melbourne Cup is a Thoroughbred horse race held in Melbourne, Australia. It is a 3200-metre race for three-year-olds and over, conducted by the Victoria Racing Club on the Flemington Racecourse in Melbourne, Victoria as part of the Melb ...

in the early 1960s, and was a quarter life size. As Hitchcock's reputation grew he received a number of similar commissions from the equestrian industries including racing, pacing, polo and quarter horse racing. These early works led in later life to Hitchcock receiving commissions for over life size equestrian commissions in Norseman, Merredin and Moora,

Western Australia Western Australia (commonly abbreviated as WA) is a state of Australia occupying the western percent of the land area of Australia excluding external territories. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to th ...

as public works of art. In the 1970s, Hitchcock began to receive increasingly significant recognition for his work. These include a series of sculptures of the Russian Ballet Dancer

Rudolf Nureyev Rudolf Khametovich Nureyev ( ; Tatar/ Bashkir: Рудольф Хәмит улы Нуриев; rus, Рудо́льф Хаме́тович Нуре́ев, p=rʊˈdolʲf xɐˈmʲetəvʲɪtɕ nʊˈrʲejɪf; 17 March 19386 January 1993) was a Soviet ...

. Throughout his career he has created sculptures of prominent and (in his own words) "interesting people". These include

Leonard Cohen Leonard Norman Cohen (September 21, 1934November 7, 2016) was a Canadian singer-songwriter, poet and novelist. His work explored religion, politics, isolation, depression, sexuality, loss, death, and romantic relationships. He was inducted in ...

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, Professor Ian Constable,

Beethoven Ludwig van Beethoven (baptised 17 December 177026 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. Beethoven remains one of the most admired composers in the history of Western music; his works rank amongst the most performed of the classical ...

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(for the Robbie Burns Society) and many prominent Australian public and sporting figures. Towards the end of the 1970s Hitchcock bronzes took on a larger scale, which was particularly suited for public art commissions – the most significant of which is, almost certainly, his sculpture of Yagan. From the mid-1970s, members of the

Noongar The Noongar (, also spelt Noongah, Nyungar , Nyoongar, Nyoongah, Nyungah, Nyugah, and Yunga ) are Aboriginal Australian peoples who live in the south-west corner of Western Australia, from Geraldton on the west coast to Esperance on the so ...

community lobbied for the erection of a statue of

Yagan Yagan (; – 11 July 1833) was an Aboriginal Australian warrior from the Noongar people. Yagan was pursued by the local authorities after he killed Erin Entwhistle, a servant of farmer Archibald Butler. It was an act of retaliation after ...

as part of the

WAY 1979 WAY 79, also referred to as WAY '79 and WAY 1979, was the official 1979 sesquicentennial (150th anniversary) celebration of the European colonisation of Western Australia. Planning Preliminary planning for WAY 79 began shortly after the March 1 ...

sesquicentennial celebrations. Their requests were refused, however, after the

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Charles Court Sir Charles Walter Michael Court, (29 September 1911 – 22 December 2007) was a Western Australian politician, and the 21st Premier of Western Australia from 1974 to 1982. He was a member of the Liberal Party. Early life Court's family e ...

was advised by one prominent historian that Yagan was not important enough to warrant a statue. The Noongar community then established a Yagan Committee and eventually raised sufficient funds to commission Hitchcock to create a statue. The result was a life-size statue in bronze, depicting Yagan standing naked with a spear held across his shoulders. Hitchcock's statue of Yagan was officially opened by Yagan Committee chairperson Elizabeth Hanson on 11 September 1984. It stands on

Heirisson Island Heirisson Island is an island in the Swan River in Western Australia at the eastern end of Perth Water, between the suburbs of East Perth and Victoria Park. It occupies an area of , and is connected to the two foreshores by The Causeway. The ne ...

in the Swan River near Perth. Yagan Statue 2005

Hitchcock moved into his larger studio (which he currently works from) in 2000 and continues to be highly sought after and collectable. A recent high-profile commission was for the SAS Garden of Reflection in Perth. This consists of three larger than life size SAS figures in various uniforms from 1957 (the inception of the SAS in Australia) with the remaining two in modern combat uniform and weapons. These commissions are highly accurate in detail and give a true representation of the Australia SAS soldier.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hitchcock, Robert 1944 births Living people 20th-century Australian sculptors Artists from Perth, Western Australia Indigenous Australians from Western Australia Australian people of Irish descent 21st-century Australian sculptors