Details of Sculptor

Surname

Westmacott

Alternative Surname

First Name

Richard III RA

Initial of Surname

W

Year of Birth/Baptism

1799

Flourished

Year of Death

1872

Biographical Details

The most notable of the third generation of Westmacott sculptors, he was also a prolific writer on the art. He was the eldest son of Sir Richard Westmacott RA and Dorothy Margaret Wilkinson and was baptised in Grosvenor Square, London. He was sent to the then fashionable Ealing School and in his youth hoped to become a barrister, although eventually he acceded to his father’s wishes and trained as a sculptor in the latter’s studio. In March 1818 he entered the Royal Academy Schools and in 1820 his father paid for him to go to Italy, where he spent six years studying Greek and Roman art.
A sketchbook of this period reveals that Westmacott travelled widely in Italy, looking at a number of northern cities as well as Venice, Florence and Rome. He was visited in his Rome studio in 1823 by the Duke of Devonshire, for whom he designed a statue of a seated cymbal player, which he executed in marble on his return to London (89). In 1825 he completed the standing monument to a renowned beauty, Rosa Bathurst, the young daughter of a diplomat, who had drowned in the River Tiber (6). Westmacott’s memorial, which has reliefs of an angel ferrying the girl to heaven from the waters, became a noted site for visiting English tourists. A drawing of Westmacott in Rome depicting him as a Byronic figure holding a modelling tool was executed by John Partridge.
After his return to England Westmacott lived at the family home at 14 South Audley Street, where he executed chimneypieces for Buckingham Palace and worked with his father on a relief intended for the Marble Arch (149, 152). In 1827 he exhibited at the Royal Academy for the first time, showing a figure of a girl with a bird (87), which the Art Journal subsequently described as ‘characterised by considerable grace and purity of feeling’ (AJ 1872, 167).
By 1830 he had set up his own studio at 21 Wilton Place, sending out monuments, busts, chimneypieces and, on occasion, ideal works. His most notable monument of the 1830s was to John Wycliffe, the celebrated the 14th-century ecclesiastical reformer (31). The relief, ordered for Wycliffe’s local church at Lutterworth, Leics, depicts the Bible translator preaching animatedly to a cross-section of English society.
Westmacott’s busts include the herm of Davies Gilbert (102) and the austere neoclassical representation of Dr Friedrich August Rosen, a Professor of Oriental Languages at University College, London (105). A letter from Westmacott to one of his clients, Lord John Russell, who sat for his portrait (120) stipulates that his charge for a bust was 60 guineas. He worked with R W Sievier at Chatsworth, where he disappointed the 6th Duke of Devonshire with a chimneypiece adorned with Bacchanalian figures, supplied in 1833. ‘I wanted more abandon, and joyous expression’ the Duke complained in his handbook to his collection, ‘I find these baccanali too composed and sedate’ (150) (Cavendish 1846, 83). Westmacott provided two reliefs for Bowood on classical and literary themes (156, 157) and reliefs for the Earl of Ellesmere (159, 160). The latter works included Blue bell, a curious representation of a bare-breasted, winged female seated in a flower, was illustrated in the Art Journal and was praised for its ‘flowing wavy grace’ and elegance of conception (AJ 1849, 56).
In 1838 Westmacott was elected an ARA and in 1849 an RA. In the 1840s he produced a number of monuments with life-sized recumbent effigies (55, 56, 59, 70, 79, 81), including one to a 15-year old Eton schoolboy, Charles Packe (48). Other effigial monuments incorporate effete angels, for instance one standing over and blessing the dead child, Charlotte Egerton (58). The angel guarding the family vault of the Baring family was singled out by both the Builder and the Art Journal as one of Westmacott’s finest works (65).
His most notable sculpture from this period is probably the pediment relief for the Royal Exchange (153). A group of 17 figures representing the progress of world trade and Britain’s divinely providential status at its heart, it was entitled ‘The Earth is the Lord’s and the Fulness Thereof’. Its centrepiece is a ten foot high statue of Commerce between interacting trading groups composed of the mayor and aldermen of the City, a Turk, an Armenian, two Asiatics, one Greek, one Persian, a black slave, a Levantine sailor and representatives of the British Navy. According to the Illustrated London News, who disapproved of Westmacott’s inclusion of an allegorical figure at the centre of the composition, Westmacott chose to carve all the figures in the round, even though the contract had stipulated figures in relief.
In 1845 Westmacott married an heiress, Caroline Elizabeth Edgell, and his father settled a considerable sum on him. Although he must now have been well off he continued to work and his monument to Joseph Ridgway is one of his most simple and affecting compositions, featuring a statue of a female kneeling before an altar on a raised plinth, with her finger marking her page in the Bible (71). At about this time Westmacott appears to have begun to write on the history of sculpture, contributing an article on the practice of medieval sculpture in England to the Archaeological Journal in 1846.
In 1856 Westmacott’s father died, leaving his son the property in Audley Street, together with his library and the bulk of his paintings, medals and prints. In June 1857 the Royal Academy appointed Westmacott to succeed his father as professor of sculpture, and he appears increasingly to have devoted his energies to the academic study of sculpture rather than its practice. In addition to his course of lectures for students he wrote a Handbook of Sculpture Ancient and Modern (1864), which was originally composed for the Encyclopaedia Britannica and he contributed numerous articles on the history of sculpture to the Archaeological Journal and the Builder. His literary efforts extended also to farces for the stage. He enthusiastically carried out his duties as advisor on sculpture to the British Museum, drawing on his knowledge of European galleries and offering extensive and sometimes controversial advice on the sculptural displays. The Art Journal said of him that he was ‘indeed learned in his art, and accepted as an authority on all matters connected with it’ (AJ 1872, 167).
Westmacott’s health failed noticeably in the last years of his life, and a fall in 1871 left him unable to use his right hand, though he then apparently trained himself to write with his left. He died on 19 April 1872 at his home, a highly decorated and asymmetrical multi-storey corner house at 1 Kensington Gate, Hyde Park. In his will he left effects to the value of nearly £25,000. A monument, incorporating one of his own reliefs, was erected to his memory in St Mary Abbots, Kensington (84).
The obituarists were in no doubt that the artistic community had lost a very learned and esteemed sculptor. The Art Journal compared his work unfavourably with his father’s, but nonetheless conceded the younger man’s merit as both sculptor and scholar. The Builder, mourning a ‘friend and valued contributor’ felt that Westmacott shared his father’s grace and tenderness in conception, ‘purity of feeling’ and classical severity, and added that the son’s ‘genius was of a graver character, and he excelled in monumental and devotional subjects, and in fancies of a thoughtful and reflective cast’ (Builder 1872, 380). Although clearly a sculptor of some note in his day, his work appears not to have been received much commendation since. Gunnis, who was not a devotee of Victorian sculpture, dismissed Westmacott’s monuments as ‘competent, though uninspired’ (Gunnis 1968, 428), while Whinney tartly described the sculptor’s works as ‘a pale reflection of those of his father, and not, unfortunately, of his father at his best’ (Whinney 1988, 397).
MGS
Literary References: AJ 1872, 167; Builder 1872, 380; Graves VIII, 1905-6, 239-40; Hutchison 1960-2, 171; JKB 1972 (3), 329; Penny 1977 (1), 106; Perry 1978, 292-7; Haskell and Penny 1981, 336; Read 1982, 16; Jenkins 1992, 50; Busco 1994, passim; Yarrington 2009, 48, 56 n60
Archival References: Westmacott Family Archive; Westmacott III/Russell; RA/GA 10 April 1850; IGI
Additional MS Sources: Westmacott III, Letters
Wills: Richard Westmacott III RA, PPR 18 May 1872; Sir Richard Westmacott RA PROB 11/2245/234-8
Collections of Drawings: (1) Sketchbook, HMI Wes/A/S4, 263, studies, two of which are signed ‘Rome’, dated 1823 and 1825. Included are numerous other drawings made in Italian cities, also sketches of works by Chinard, Bernini, Botticelli, Kessel, Pietro Tenerani and Antonio Canova. There are also sketches of the Bishop Hough monument by L-F Roubiliac, and works by Sir Francis Chantrey and Bertel Thorvaldsen at Woburn Abbey, Beds. (2) Sketchbook HMI Wes/DS6, including a sketch of the statue of Duncan Forbes by L-F Roubiliac, landscape sketches and drawings of family groups. (3) Sketchbook HMI D/S2 2, 22 watercolour views of Tunbridge Wells and Southend, most inscribed, one dated 1863
Miscellaneous Drawings: Christ appearing to the two disciples journeying to Emmaus, design, probably for bas-relief, signed with monogram, RW, inscribed with title, pencil, pen and ink, VAM E.963-1965; design for the swan fountain in Regent’s Park, 1862, untraced, the work executed by his cousin James Sherwood Westmacott (ILN 12 July 1862, 59); designs for a moral allegory, The Fighte of Free Wille, published 1839, HMI D/E1 8
Representations of the Sculptor: John Partridge, 1825, pencil on paper, signed ‘Rome’, NPG 3944/4; Alfred, Count D’Orsay, 1831, pencil and black chalk, NPG 4026/59, and another, ditto in profile (both reproduced in Ormond 1973, reprs 980 and 981)