Alfred Stevens designed beer mugs and was the greatest British Sculpture of the 19^th Century. 

He was born the son of a housepainter in the village of Dorset, but caught the eye of a charitable clergyman who funded his schooling in Italy.  Interestingly, this most English sculptor never attended art school in England.

He returned to Britain and tried his hand at design, decorating, and painting.  He designed beer mugs, lampposts, stoves, and more prestigiously, the railings and vases in front of the British Museum.  In his free time he pulled a dragoon off a horse during a riot, was on the frontlines of skirmishes, went into the heart of cholera epidemics, and hung out in prison cells.

His big break came (or so he thought) when he won the government commission for the Wellington Monument in St. Paul’s Cathedral.  His design actually came in sixth place, but his meager asking price of 20,000 pounds came in first: Government choosing cheapness over quality … some things never change.

Stevens spent the rest of his life on the sculptures for the monument, while his soul and artistic vision were gradually crushed under bureaucratic red tape.  He became so jaded with the project that he abandoned it entirely just to spite the British Government.  They hired another sculptor to complete it, and the work wasn’t finished until the 1920s (half a century after Stevens’ death).  Stevens was so busy with the disastrous monument that he barely left any other sculptures.  The monument has posthumously been recognized as the single greatest British sculpture of the century, small compensation for ruining his life.

Three years after a paralytic stroke, Stevens dropped dead in his studio.  The exact cause of death has never been determined, but we can only assume bitterness had something to do with it.  His obituary read, “He left neither wife, children, nor riches … He was insanely devoted to his art.”  In other words, he was a genius but bureaucratic bullsh*t destroyed his career, and he died alone and penniless.  So basically, Alfred Stevens was the Frank Grimes of Victorian art, and the British Government was Homer Simpson.