
The son of a state page at St James Palace, Halse, entered Drummond’s Bank, Cheapside, in 1846 as a clerk. He remained there for the next forty-nine years, eventually rising to Chief Clerk, managing the day-to-day operations of the bank and its staff. Despite being apparently self-taught, he was also a prolific and successful sculptor, producing over ninety sculptures, often portrait busts but also literary and genre subjects, several of which were reproduced in parian porcelain by the Staffordshire pottery firm, Copeland, and exhibited widely from the 1850s until his death. Halse was also an author, publishing poetry and novels and, in 1880, the manual A Guide to Modelling, which went into many editions and was still in print in the 20th century.
Text source: Miranda Goodby