Background
Birch was born in Brixton, son of the author and translator Jonathan Birch (1783–1847) and his wife Esther (née Brooke). In the following year, 1845, his father moved to Germany, and Birch attended the Royal Academy in Berlin, where he produced his first significant work, a bust of the British Ambassador to Berlin, the Earl of Westmoreland.
Career
As a child he showed artistic promise, and at the age of twelve he was admitted to study at Somerset House School of Design. He returned to England in 1852 and became a student at the Royal Academy of Arts, gaining two medals. Foreign ten years he was principal assistant to John Henry Foley Resident Advisor and from 1852 till his death he exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy, and was elected to the Associateship of the Academy in 1880.
lieutenant was subsequently selected as one of the representative works of British art for the Vienna, Philadelphia and Paris Exhibitions.
In 1891 he was one of eight eminent artists who were invited to submit designs for new British coinage. Adrian Jones and Horace Montford were pupils of Birch.