Details of Sculptor

Surname

Westmacott

Alternative Surname

First Name

Henry

Initial of Surname

W

Year of Birth/Baptism

1784

Flourished

Year of Death

1861

Biographical Details

Westmacott was christened on 13 October 1784 at St George, Hanover Square, London, the son of Richard Westmacott I and Sarah, née Vardy. He was the younger brother of Sir Richard Westmacott RA. He was probably trained by his father and had a moiety of the family workshop at 25 Mount Street at the time of his father’s death in 1808. In his father’s will it was stipulated that Henry was to continue the family business, one half of which was to belong to Henry’s mother and be used for the maintenance of the younger members of the family. This arrangement was to continue for seven years,
In May 1810 he married Eliza Brodie Stewart, daughter of the town clerk of Montrose, who seems to have been the ward of Captain John Guise of the East India Company. Guise married Westmacott’s sister, Maria, in August of the same year. Westmacott and his wife had five sons and four daughters, including James Sherwood Westmacott, who also became a sculptor, after which the business was to become Henry’s own.
It continued along the lines set by Richard Westmacott I, producing chimneypieces, carrying out masonry work and providing wall-monuments. In 1808 he was paid £1,399 0s 10d for numerous chimneypieces at Kensington Palace (78-81) and others followed (82, 83). In 1810 he was employed as a mason at Somerset House and two years later in the same capacity, at the Fleet prison. In 1814 he received a large payment for architectural carving at Greenwich (88, 89) and in 1818-19 worked at Lord Carrington’s house in Whitehall. Like his father, Westmacott collaborated with the architect James Wyatt, carrying out a range of carved work at Dodington Park (85, 87). His monument to Ernest Udny (10), like the elder Westmacott’s to John Platt, has an inscription slab in the form of drapery hanging over an arrow with a putto below.
The sculptor appears very likely to have been the Westmacott who carried out architectural carving at Fonthill between 1807 and 1822 (92). The temperamental William Beckford, who referred to the carver as ‘Rhinoceros’, was intermittently delighted and exasperated by Westmacott’s efforts. In 1817 Beckford was enraptured by the sight of ‘Rhinoceros’, ‘on scaffolding, carving the ornaments of the Oriel divinely, incomparably’ although by 1819 he had tired of this ‘beast’ who had, by his assessment ‘neither taste nor a sense of proportion, and not the least knowledge of the true Gothic style’ (Alexander 1957, 217, 221, 304).
Westmacott’s monuments are, typically, crisply carved wall-slabs with some neoclassical decoration, but he signed a handful of more elaborate works in the 1820s. These incorporate figurative elements such as the mourning figures in high relief on the monument to George Ede (42) and the pilgrim grieving at a grave on the monument to Caleb Dickinson (51). This last was one of several works exported to Jamaica. Perhaps his most notable work in England is the full-length relief portrait of the deceased Lord William Gordon, shown in full highland dress with a sword, his hand resting on his hip (50).
Westmacott continued to take masonry contracts throughout the 1820s: in 1825 he built part of the Royal Mews at Pimlico and was also employed as a mason at Buckingham Palace and at the stationary office at Buckingham Gate. He appears to have supplied paving in Langley Marish church, Bucks and in 1823 he and his brother George Westmacott were paid £801 for the base for the statue of Achilles in Hyde Park. This commemorated the victories of the Duke of Wellington and was the work of their more distinguished sibling, Sir Richard Westmacott.
In December 1827 Westmacott remarried, at St Clement Dane’s, Hannah Wilkinson Rowe, a descendant of Nicholas Rowe (1673-1718), the poet laureate. The following year he appears to have moved to Edinburgh. In 1830 he exhibited at the Liverpool and Scottish Academies, giving his address as 8 West Lauriston Lane, Edinburgh. In 1832 he exhibited at the West of Scotland Academy from 22 Windsor Street, Edinburgh and in 1835 his address was 5 Royal Terrace in the same city. He appears to have been closely involved with the Scottish Academy, being employed as a drawing tutor in 1833 and donating casts of the Apollo Belvedere and Diana in the same year. He was also made an honorary member of the Academy.
It is noteworthy that Westmacott’s Scottish sculpture appears to have been of a rather more elevated nature than his known work in London. A large proportion of his Edinburgh output was busts, a genre of sculpture which does not feature as part of his pre-1830 oeuvre, and these include some distinguished commissions, such as the portrait of President Jackson of the USA (75) and the bust of Sir Walter Scott (74). His bust of Nicolò Paganini, with hair and side whiskers animated like sea-creatures, was probably carved to mark the virtuoso violinist’s visit to Britain in 1831-2 (68).
In 1836 he exhibited for the last time at the Scottish Academy, showing a model of a cenotaph for a monument to Sir Walter Scott, to be erected in New York. Westmacott died in 1861 at Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Gunnis’s lukewarm verdict on Westmacott’s work was that his monuments were ‘competent, but not outstanding’ (Gunnis 1968, 421).
MGS
Literary References: Farington vol 15, 5140; Graves VIII, 1905-6, 235; Rinder and McKay 1917, 415; Gunnis 1968, 421-2; Colvin VI, 1973-6, 131, 485; Woodward 1977 (vol 1, pt 2), 264; Busco 1994, 7; Morris and Roberts 1998, 643
Archival References: Westmacott/Harvey; Soane Bill Book G fols 205-6 (Lord Carrington’s house); GPC; IGI
Additional MS Sources: Sun Insurance, policies for 25 Mount Street, 1820, 11936/483/962846-7, 966271-2; Westmacott/Cornewall
Will: Richard Westmacott I, PROB 11/1483/253-4