Richard Westmacott

Sir Richard Westmacott RA
Born	(1775-07-15)15 July 1775 London, England
Died	1 September 1856(1856-09-01) (aged 81) London
Resting place	Chastleton, Oxfordshire
Nationality	British
Known for	sculpture

Sir Richard Westmacott RA (15 July 1775 – 1 September 1856) was a British sculptor.^[1]

Life and career[]

Westmacott studied with his father, also named Richard Westmacott, at his studio in Mount Street, off Grosvenor Square in London before going to Rome in 1793 to study under Antonio Canova.^[2] Westmacott devoted all his energies to the study of classical sculpture, and throughout his life his real sympathies were with pagan rather than with Christian art. Within a year of his arrival in Rome he won the first prize for sculpture offered by the Florentine Academy of Arts, and in the following year he gained the papal gold medal awarded by the Academy of St Luke with his bas-relief of Joseph and his brothers.^[3] On returning to England in 1797, he set up a studio, where John Edward Carew and Musgrave Watson gained experience.

Westmacott had his own foundry at Pimlico, in London, where he cast both his own works, and those of other sculptors, including John Flaxman's statue of Sir John Moore for Glasgow. Late in life he was asked by the Office of Works for advice on the casting of the relief panels for Nelson’s Column.^[4] He also had an arrangement with the Trustees of the British Museum, which allowed him to make moulds and supply plaster casts of classical sculpture in the museum's collection to country house owners, academies and other institutions.^[4]

Statue of Achilles (1822) on the Wellington Monument at Hyde Park Corner, London.

Westmacott exhibited at the Royal Academy between 1797 and 1839. His name is given in the catalogues as "R. Westmacott, Junr." until 1807, when the "Junr." was dropped.^[5] He was elected an associate of the Royal Academy in 1805, and a full academician in 1811.^[2] His academy diploma piece, a marble relief of Jupiter and Ganymede, remains in the Academy's collection.^[6] He was professor of sculpture at the Academy from 1827 until his death.^[2] He received his knighthood on 19 July 1837.^[7][8]

Works[]

Among Westmacott's works are the reliefs for the north side of Marble Arch, the sculptures of figures representing The Progress of Civilisation on the pediment of the British Museum,^[9] and the Waterloo Vase now in Buckingham Palace Gardens. This enormous urn was sculpted from chunks of marble earmarked by Napoleon for a trophy commemorating his anticipated victory in the Napoleonic Wars and then given to George IV as a gift from the Grand Duke of Tuscany.

His statue of Horatio Nelson, Birmingham was the first statue of Nelson unveiled in Britain. There are other monuments to Nelson by Westmacott at the Bull Ring, Birmingham, in Barbados,^{[citation needed]} while that at Liverpool was modelled and cast by Westmacott, to a design by Matthew Cotes Wyatt.^[4][10] In Liverpool there is also an equestrian statue of King George III sculpted by Westmacott, which was unveiled in 1822.^[11] He was responsible for the statue of the agriculturalist and developer Francis Russell, 5th Duke of Bedford in Russell Square, and the one of the Duke of York on top of the column in Waterloo place.^[2] His Achilles in Hyde Park, a bronze copy of an antique sculpture from Monte Cavallo in Rome, is a tribute to the Duke of Wellington, paid for by £10,000 raised by female subscribers.^[12][9]

His sculptures of poetical subjects were in a style similar to those of the contemporary Italian school: his works of this type included Psyche and Cupid for the Duke of Bedford; Euphrosyne for the Duke of Newcastle; A Nymph Unclasping her Zone; The Distressed Mother and The Houseless Traveller.^[2]

Westmacott also sculpted the memorials to William Pitt the Younger, Spencer Perceval, Charles James Fox and Joseph Addison in Westminster Abbey; the statue of Fox in Bloomsbury Square; and those to Sir Ralph Abercromby, Lord Collingwood and Generals Pakenham and Gibbs in St Paul's Cathedral.^[2]

Blue plaque at 14 South Audley Street, London

His other sepulchural monuments include those to Lt. General Christopher Jeaffreson (died 1824) in St.Mary's Church in Dullingham;^[13] to Commander Charles Cotton (died 1828) at St. Mary's Church in Madingley;^[14] to William Pemberton (died 1828) at St Margaret's Church in Newton, South Cambridgeshire;^[15] to Sir George Warren (died 1801) at St. Mary's Church, Stockport in Greater Manchester, depicting a standing female figure by an urn on a pillar;^[16] to Rev. Charles Prescott (died 1820), in St. Mary's Church, Stockport, showing a seated effigy^[16] and to Mary Henson (died 1805) in Bainton parish church, showing a seated figure against an urn. A bust of David Garrick by Westmacott is in Lichfield Cathedral.^[17]

He created a sculptural group for the marble arch of the to Hyde Park.^[18]

Personal life[]

Westmacott lived and died at 14 South Audley Street, Mayfair, London where he is commemorated by a blue plaque.^[19] Two of his brothers, George, who was active between 1799 and 1827, and Henry, (1784–1861) were also sculptors.^[9] In 1798 Westmacott married Dorothy Margaret Wilkinson.^[3] Their son, also called Richard Westmacott, followed closely in his footsteps also becoming a notable sculptor, a Royal Academician and professor of sculpture at the academy.

Westmacott is buried in a tomb at St Mary's Church, Chastleton in Oxfordshire, where his third son Horatio was rector in 1878.

Selected works[]

Image	Title / subject	Location and coordinates	Date	Type	Material	Dimensions	Designation	Wikidata	Notes
	Adam Duncan, 1st Viscount Duncan	Crypt of St Paul's Cathedral, London		Statue on pedestal	Stone
	John Locke	University College London	1808	Statue	Marble
More images	Statue of Horatio Nelson	The Bull Ring, Birmingham, West Midlands	1809	Sculpture group on pedestal	Bronze and stone		Grade II*	Q7604486	[17][20]
More images	Francis Russell, 5th Duke of Bedford	Russell Square, London	1809	Statue group on cylindrical pedestal	Bronze and granite		Grade II	Q27082115	[17][21]
More images	Statue of Robert Milligan	West India Docks, London	1813	Statue on pedestal with plaques	Bronze and stone			Q96183031	Removed 2020
More images	Monument to Horatio Nelson	Exchange Flags, Liverpool	1813	Statue group on pedestal with plaques	Stone, bronze and granite		Grade II*	Q4343277	Designer, Matthew Cotes Wyatt[17][22]
More images	Statue of Charles James Fox	Bloomsbury Square, London	1814, erected 1816	Statue on cuboid pedestal	Bronze and granite	5.2m tall	Grade II*	Q17542668	[17][23][24]
More images	William Pitt the Younger	Pembroke College, Cambridge	1819	Statue on pedestal
More images	Wellington Monument, London	Hyde Park Corner, London	1822	Statue on pedestal	Bronze and granite		Grade I	Q13528921	[17][25][9]
More images	George III	Monument Place, Liverpool	1822	Equestrian statue on pedestal	Bronze and stone		Grade II	Q26629818	[17][26]
More images	Statue of George III	Windsor Great Park	1831	Equestrian statue on pedestal	Bronze and stone		Grade I	Q7727584	[17][27]
More images	Statue of George Canning	Parliament Square, London	1832	Statue on pedestal	Bronze and granite	7.9m tall	Grade II	Q21546419	[17][23][28]
More images	Duke of York	Duke of York Column, London	1833	Statue on pedestal and column	Bronze and stone	4.2m statue, 3m pedestal, 34m column	Grade I	Q2911131	Architect, Benjamin Dean Wyatt[17][23][29]
	Dr. John Alderson	Hull Royal Infirmary	1833	Statue on pedestal	Marble and stone		Grade II	Q26568781	[17][30]
	Dorothy Margaret Westmacott	St Nicholas' Church, Brighton	1834	Funerary bust
	Mary, Queen of Scots	Hardwick Hall, Derbyshire		Statue on pedestal	Marble and stone				Relocated from Chatsworth House[17]

References[]

Sources[]

• Busco, Marie. "Westmacott, Sir Richard (1775–1856)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/29114. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
• Dodgson, Campbell (1899). "Westmacott, Richard (1775-1856)" . In Lee, Sidney (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. 60. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Westmacott, Sir Richard". Encyclopædia Britannica. 28 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 547–548.
• Pevsner, Nikolaus (1970). Cambridgeshire. The Buildings of England (second ed.). Penguin Books.

External links[]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Richard Westmacott.

• 24 artworks by or after Richard Westmacott at the Art UK site
• Hindoo Girl, By an Urn, from a Group, by Westmacott. A poem by Letitia Elizabeth Landon in Friendship's Offering, 1826.