Details of Sculptor

Surname

White

Alternative Surname

First Name

Thomas, of Worcester

Initial of Surname

W

Year of Birth/Baptism

c1674

Flourished

Year of Death

1748

Biographical Details

White was a carver and, according to several commentators, an architect, though he described himself in his will as a statuary, a claim endorsed by the quantity and quality of his known sculpture. He was well regarded by early historians of his native Worcester where he executed much of his work, but he also had premises in Shrewsbury. He was probably trained in London where he was apprenticed to a ‘statuary and stone-cutter in Piccadilly’ (Green 1796, 89). He may conceivably be the Thomas White made free of the Masons’ Company as a ‘Foreign Member’ on 13 January 1690.
He was working in Worcester by 1709 when he became a freeman of that city having made ‘a handsome effigie of the Queen to ye well likeing of the Mayor and Aldermen’ (15) and in 1712 he repaired statues of Charles I and Charles II (16). His work must have impressed the city elders: when rebuilding work began at Worcester Guildhall in 1721, White worked on the sculptural programme. The two statues of Stuart kings were positioned on the façade with his figure of Queen Anne and the pediment was exuberantly carved with trophies, statues and reliefs (20). In 1724 the Corporation granted him an annuity of £30 in recognition of this work. As a good citizen he stipulated in his will that any outstanding monies from the annuity should be used by the Worcester Infirmary.
His practice encompassed funerary monuments, both tablets and figurative compositions, and he built several churches in Worcester. He died in 1748 and was buried at Kempsey, near Worcester. In his will, proved on 14 September that year, he left property to his servant Mary Rudsbey and to several family members.
Colvin describes him as a ‘very competent draughtsman’ and notes that he was responsible for the ‘elaborate’ Worcester guildhall pediment, but other commentators have been less kind. Whiffen dismissed him as ‘not a great architect, and still further from being a great sculptor’ (Whiffen 1945, 1005). Pevsner thought the tablet to Bridges Nanfan at Birtsmorton ‘nothing special’ and refused to consider White as author of the splendid neighbouring monument to William Caldwell, despite a convincing attribution by Buchanan-Dunlop. Pevsner described the extensive sculptural programme at Worcester Guildhall as bellicose and barbaric in its splendour, though it clearly makes a substantial and positive contribution to the grandeur of the building. Whatever the merit of his funerary monuments, White’s work at the Guildhall marks him out as one of Worcester’s most significant artistic figures.
Lucy Jessop
Literary References: Nash 1791, passim; Green 1796, 89; Watkin 1907, 1-80, 147-78; Griffiths 1932, 93; Wren MS 1941, 204; Buchanan-Dunlop 1943, 17, 18, 19; Buchanan-Dunlop 1944 (1), 64; Whiffen 1945, 1002; Pevsner, Worcs, 1968, 92, 323; Shaw 1976, I, passim; Colvin 1995, 1004; Archival References: Masons’ Co, Freemen, fol 72
Will: PROB 11/764/349