Full Name: Molesworth, Hender Delves
Other Names:
- Hender Delves Molesworth
Gender: male
Date Born: 1907
Date Died: 1978
Place Died: London, Greater London, England, UK
Home Country/ies: United Kingdom
Subject Area(s): sculpture (visual works)
Career(s): curators
Overview
Keeper of sculpture, Victoria and Albert Museum. Molesworth was education at Oundle and University College, Oxford. He studied additionally in Germany and at the Kunsthistorisches Institut, Florence where he became an expert on German sculpture of the 15th and 16th centuries. In 1931 he joined the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, in the Department of Architecture and Sculpture. The following year he married Eve Galloway. He served as the director of the Institute of Jamaica between 1936 and 1938. During World War II, Molesworth was press attache in Abyssinia (modern Ethiopia) from 1942 to 1945. Returning from the War, Molesworth succeeded to Keeper of the Department of Architecture and Sculpture, succeeding Margaret Longhurst, who had retired in 1942. His two-volume Sculpture in England was published in 1951. He was named keeper of Woodwork at the V&A, succeeding Ralph Edwards, in 1954. Following that he published books on furniture. His titles were translated into numerous foreign languages.
Selected Bibliography
Sculpture in England: Mediaeval. London: British Council/Longmans, Green, 1951; Sculpture in England: Renaissance to Early XIX century. London British Council/Longmans, Green 1951; European Sculpture from Romanesque to Neoclassic. New York: F.A. Praeger, 1965; . and Kenworthy-Browne, J. A. Three Centuries of Furniture in Colour. London: Joseph, 1972.
Sources
[obituary:] “Mr H. D. Molesworth.” Times (London) April 26, 1978, p. 20.