Charles Bell Birch was born at Brixton in Surrey on 28 September 1832. He was son of the author Jonathan Birch (1783-1847). He followed the well-trodden path of aspiring artists and studied at Somerset House School of Design, off The Strand in London. His family then moved to Berlin in Prussia, where he continued his studies at the Kurfürstliche Akademie der Künste, under the eminent German masters Ludwig Wilhelm Wichmann (1788-1859) and Christian Daniel Rauch (1777-1857).
His father’s friendship with the Prussian royal family afforded Birch a number of artistic opportunities and he was commissioned in 1852 by Kaiser Friedrich Wilhelm IV to execute a bust of the Earl of Westmoreland, British Ambassador to the Prussian Court. Birch returned to England shortly thereafter and entered the Royal Academy Schools, where he won two medals. In 1859 he entered the studios of the distinguished Irish sculptor John Henry Foley and spent the next ten years as his assistant. During that period, he modelled the Arab steed in Foley’s equestrian statue of General Outram.
Birch first exhibited at the RA in 1852. He tried his hand at all forms of sculpture and also painted portraits and water-colour pictures. However, his style was more or less set by his education and training in Berlin, with what has been described as: ‘a naturalistic veneer upon a classical foundation’. He worked in a variety of media and turned out a considerable number of statuettes, reliefs, medallions and statues. Birch demonstrated a considerable facility in sculpting the portrait bust and those exhibited at the RA included: Mrs E M Ward (1854); James Laurie, Esq (1855); J Williams, Esq (1855); G M Tagore, Esq of Calcutta (1856); Robert Pasley, Esq, QC (1857); the Crown Prince of Prussia (1858); Mrs Francis C Webb (1859); Judge J J Lonsdale (1866); William Morley, Esq (1874); Dr McLennan Physician-General, Bombay (1876); Sir Digbijaisingh Bahadur, Maharajah of Bulrampore (1881) and Professor Robertson, late Principal of the Royal Veterinary College (1889).
In 1864 Birch won a £600 prize in an Art Union competition for his Wood Nymph and the popularity of the work led to it being exhibited in Vienna, Philadelphia and Paris. His other works included The Last Call (1879) (depicting the simultaneous dramatic death of a trumpeter and horse in battle), his monuments include Lady Godiva at Liverpool and his heroic bronze figure of Major-General William Earle (1880) standing athwart a Zulu shield on St George’s Plateau at Lime Street, Liverpool. That same year, he modelled the much criticised Griffin on Sir Horace Jones’s Temple Bar Memorial in Fleet Street. Birch’s statues were few in number, but highly accomplished in execution. His magisterial bronze figure of Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield (1883) in his Garter robes stands on the steps of St George’s Hall, Lime Street, Liverpool.
Birch was one of the four artists asked to model equestrian statues in the ultimately doomed venture to place sculptures on Blackfriars Bridge. His successful bronze statue of Queen Victoria may be found in New Bridge Street by Blackfriars Bridge. Further copies were turned out for Scarborough Town Hall Gardens, Derby Royal Infirmary, Newcastle Under Lyme (Station Walks Park), Aberdeen, Guernsey, Victoria Square, Adelaide, and Oodeypore in India. A plaster copy of Birch’s life-like and highly dramatic Lieutenant Walter R Pollock Hamilton, VC Memorial may be found at the National Army Museum in Chelsea, London. The Chadwick Memorial in Bolton, Victoria Square, is by him, as is the statue of the Earl of Dudley in Castle Street, Dudley. His bust of the politician Earl Russell (1867) may be found in the Guildhall, London. Birch trained the eminent equestrian sculptor Captain Adrian Jones in his art.
