Benjamin Clemens

[1] Clemens submitted works to the British Institution's student competition, and his talent was recognized with a two-year scholarship in sculpture paying £50 a year and inclusion in the associated exhibition at the Tate Museum.

[2] After his studies at the Royal College of Art Clemens was appointed assistant master under Professor Édouard Lantéri.

A reviewer for the British Medical Journal thought Clemens's plaster casts of the head of An Orderly, The Pick-a-back and the Camel-Cacolet amply repaid the visitor's attention.

In 1922, Clemens was commissioned by the British Military Nurses Memorial Committee to create a statue for St Paul's Cathedral titled Bombed.

While Frederick Charles Herrick created a distinctly art deco lion for the exhibition's official symbol as did Percy Metcalfe for the exhibition medal, Clemens chose a more subdued approach for the six seated lions he sculpted in concrete for the Government Pavilion, taking a middle path between realism and art deco stylisation.

Clemens often produced monumental works in stone to fulfill commissions as part of major British construction projects of the early 20th century.

Clemens carved these figures for the new Piccadilly façade of the Burlington Arcade in 1911.
Clemens's frieze above the cornice of Africa House, London, has Britannia at its centre, flanked by noble Arab traders with their camels and a big game hunter oiling his rifle.