Details of Sculptor

Surname

Westmacott

Alternative Surname

First Name

Richard I

Initial of Surname

W

Year of Birth/Baptism

1746/7

Flourished

Year of Death

1808

Biographical Details

The first of a notable family of sculptors and architects, he was the son of Richard and Abigail Westmacott and was baptised at Stockport, Cheshire on 15 March 1746 or 1747. A later account says that he was educated at Brasenose College, Oxford, but ‘gave up all pursuit of the learned professions early in life and took to the business of a statuary’ (GM 1856, Part II, 509). This suggestion may be mythical since no record has been found of his attendance at that college.
In September 1774 Westmacott married Sarah (1750-1826), the daughter of Thomas Vardy, at St George, Hanover Square, London. Their son, Sir Richard Westmacott RA, was born in July the following year, the first of at least 13 children. In 1776 he took an apprentice, Edward Bone.
Westmacott’s workshop was in Ranelegh Street, Pimlico. His earliest datable works are chimneypieces and include one for Cobham Hall with rustic figures emblematic of Music (69), which he later adapted for a chimneypiece at Powderham Castle (79). In 1777, presumably to encourage custom, he published a set of 20 engraved designs for chimneypieces. The plates were engraved by B and JA Clowes and are rich Adamesque designs incorporating grotesques and rams’ heads as well as classical reliefs depicting Apollo, Flora and other mythological subjects. Westmacott must have been competing with Thomas Carter II, with whose works his productions bear some affinities and Westmacott’s prices appear to have been cheaper.
In January 1783 Westmacott held a sale of his stocks of marble and stone and moved to a studio at 25 Mount Street, Grosvenor Square. He was responsible for many monuments of conventional design, sometimes featuring a kneeling female mourner (4, 6) or a standing figure draping an urn (5). He occasionally used multi-coloured marbles (10, 64), and the carving is usually of a high quality. His masterpiece is the monument to James Lenox Dutton, which has a life-sized angel with outspread wings draped over a double portrait medallion (33). From beneath the folds of drapery at her feet emerges an unusually animated and beautifully carved skeleton.
Westmacott’s workshop also carried out masonry work. Between 1777 and 1784 he was one of the master-masons (together with John Wildsmith and Joseph Hawke) at Gorhambury, near St Albans, which was being built to Sir Robert Taylor’s designs. In 1781 he laid down the marble floor in the Methuen chapel in the aisle of North Wraxall church, Somerset, and in 1790 he carried out work on Lord Cremorne’s properties in Stanhope Street and Chelsea, London. In 1796 he was granted a royal appointment as mason for Kensington Palace and at the turn of the century he was working at Woburn Abbey, where he repaired and polished antique columns, laid yellow and black marble paving, and created a mosaic marble floor.
In the 1790s Westmacott carved several monuments to designs by the architect James Wyatt. The compositions are simple and classical: the monument to Joseph May consists of an urn on an altar decorated with rams’ heads (47) and the monument to the Earl of Pembroke is simply a severe sarcophagus (39). Wyatt appears to have been a friend as well as a collaborator. Farington recorded them dining together, and in June 1796 both were involved in canvassing for Sir Alan Gardner in the Westminster election against Charles James Fox and Horne Tooke. The connection proved helpful to the family as Wyatt later recommended Westmacott’s son, Sir Richard, for several commissions.
Westmacott’s business appears to have flourished in the 1790s, but foundered at the turn of the century and he was declared bankrupt in 1803. After a long illness he died on 27 February 1808. In his will, proved in July, he left all his goods, including the house in Mount Street and his cottage in Woodlands, to his wife Sarah. It appears that he and his son Richard had a prior agreement that Richard would provide funds for the upbringing of younger members of the family. The business would be owned jointly by Sarah and Henry Westmacott and be run by Henry in the interests of the family for seven years, after which time it was to belong exclusively to Henry. James Wyatt and his nephew Jeffrey were to be asked to act as mourners at the funeral.
Two of Westmacott’s other children, George Westmacott and Charles Molloy Westmacott became sculptors, whilst Thomas (†1798), John and William Berners Westmacott trained as architects.
MGS

Literary References: Westmacott 1777; Farington, vol 2, 573, 577, 578, vol 3, 947; vol 4, 1310; Notices, Monthly Mag, 2, 1803, 58; GM 1856, part II, 509; Gunnis 1968, 423; Binney 1984, 86; Whinney 1988, 316; Busco 1994, passim; Clifford 1995, 64; Colvin 1995, passim
Archival References: Apprenticeship Lists, PRO; Methuen Archives; Westmacott-Cremorne Bills; IGIWill: PROB 11/1483, 253-4
Auction Catalogues: Westmacott R I, 1783