Edward Onslow Ford RA (27 July 1852 – 23 December 1901) was an English sculptor. Much of Ford's early success came with portrait heads or busts. These were considered extremely refined, showing his subjects at their best and led to him receiving a number of commissions for public monuments and statues, both in Britain and overseas. Ford also produced a number of bronze statuettes of free-standing figures loosely drawn from mythology or of allegorical subjects. These 'ideal' figures became characteristic of the New Sculpture movement that developed in Britain from about 1880 and of which Ford was a leading exponent.

Ford was born at Islington in north London, the son of businessman Edward Ford and Martha Lydia Gardner. His family moved to Blackheath while he was still a child. After he had spent some time at Blackheath Proprietary School, he went to Antwerp to study painting at Royal Academy of Fine Arts there during 1870 and 1871. Ford then studied under Michael Wagmüller in Munich until 1874, during which time he shared a studio with the sculptor Edwin Roscoe Mullins. Before leaving Munich, Ford married a fellow student Anne Gwendoline, the third daughter of Baron Frans von Kreusser, in 1873.

On returning to England around 1874, Ford settled at Blackheath and established a studio concentrating on portrait sculptures. In 1875, he submitted a portrait bust he had sculpted of his wife to the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in London. From 1875 to 1884 Ford exhibited portrait sculptures each year at the Academy.

Much of Ford's early success came in portraiture. His portrait busts are extremely refined and show his subjects at their best. He sculpted many portrait busts which are noted for their tasteful conception, delicate modelling, and verisimilitude. The best, perhaps, are the heads of John Everett Millais, Thomas Huxley, Herbert Spencer, Sir WQ Orchardson, Matthew Ridley Corbet, the duke of Norfolk, Briton Rivière, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Sir Walter Armstrong, Sir Hubert von Herkomer, Arthur Hacker (1894), and M. Dagnan-Bouveret. Those in bronze of his fellow-artist Arthur Hacker (1894) and of the politician Arthur Balfour are striking likenesses, as is the marble statue of Sir Frederick Bramwell for the Royal Institution.

In 1881 Ford moved his studio operation to Sydney Mews, among a block of studios off the Fulham Road. Alfred Gilbert had a neighbouring studio and together they worked on a number of experimental techniques, notably in lost wax casting which Ford would use throughout his career.

In 1885 Ford exhibited a full-size bronze male nude, Linus at the Royal Academy and the following year exhibited Folly there, the first in an extended series of bronze statuettes of adolescent girls in poses loosely derived from mythology or allegorical themes. Folly was acquired by the Trusties of the Chantrey Fund for the Tate in 1886 and Ford's subsequent variations on the subject, including Peace (1887), The Singer (1889), Applause (1893) and Echo (1895) were also widely praised. These works, termed 'ideal figures', came to be regarded by art critics as among the defining works of the New Sculpture movement that had developed in Britain from about 1880 onwards as a reaction to the blandness of much other Victorian sculpture.

The modest scale of these works by Ford indicate they were not intended for grand country houses but rather for smaller domestic settings and, like other New Sculpture artists, Ford supported the commercial production of bronze statuettes and smaller copies of his work for the home market with Peace and other works by him becoming popular reproductions. Another characteristic of New Sculpture which Ford embraced was the use of polychromatic materials. For example, Applause has coloured resins with semi-precious stones and elements in silver, while The Singer uses copper and brass strips.

The Singer and 'Applause were both originally on lotus-shaped pedestals (now presumed lost), share the use of Egyptian motifs and iconography and are related by subject matter. Although created four years apart, Ford clearly considered the two works a pair and they each appear in several portraits of him, indicating both their significance to him personally and their place as his most widely exhibited works. The two were only exhibited together once, at the Paris International Exhibition of 1900, during Ford's lifetime. Since 2008 both have been in the Tate collection in London, although not always on display.