Details of Sculptor

Surname

Wyatt

Alternative Surname

First Name

James

Initial of Surname

W

Year of Birth/Baptism

1808

Flourished

Year of Death

1893

Biographical Details

James Wyatt was the second son of the sculptor Matthew Cotes Wyatt. His three brothers became architects but James trained to be a sculptor so that he might join his father’s practice, where he remained until Matthew Cotes died in 1862. He also worked independently. James inherited a considerable fortune from his father and then retired from the business. He first married a widow, Mrs Read, by whom he had three children, two daughters and a son who became an engineer. The second marriage, to Miss Florence King, took place when he was 80.
Wyatt assisted his father from an early age. In 1849 he claimed to have spent 29 years ‘upon works of very considerable importance’ sent out in his father’s name and he listed the monument to Princess Charlotte in St George’s Chapel, Windsor, 1826 and ‘works’ at Belvoir Castle including the statue of the 5th Duchess of Rutland, for which he was paid £500 for three years’ labour at the age of 18 (letter from James Wyatt to Alfred Padley, 28 Jan 1849, BM Egerton MS 3515, quoted by Robinson 1979 (2), 188). He also apparently assisted with the statue of King George III in Cockspur Street, London, 1836, the controversial figure of the Duke of Wellington for Hyde Park Corner, 1838-46 ‘and works for George III and the late Lord Dudley’ (ibid). He was particularly interested in equestrian subjects and designed the eight moulds used for casting the colossal Wellington statue.
He exhibited for the first time at the Royal Academy in 1838 with a marble statue of his young daughter entitled Lilla asleep (3). Two equestrian works were shown at the Academy in the 1840s (4, 5) and in 1844 he submitted an equestrian figure of Richard Coeur de Lion to the Westminster Hall exhibition, which was organised with the view of choosing sculptors to provide sculpture for the new Houses of Parliament (6). The statue was praised as ‘a bold and spirited horse and rider, the former amazingly life-like, the action of the King just and appropriate’ (Lit Gaz, 1844, 482). The Builder (1844, 367) considered it ‘of considerable beauty’, but no commission for Parliament followed.
Wyatt evidently inherited his father’s taste for the theatrical, for in 1838 he was responsible for designing a monument to Begum Sombre, a former dancing girl whose husband ruled the principality of Sirdhana in India (2). Allegorical figures adapted from Bernini’s sculpture are placed in a crinkle-crankle gothic chapel, which has angels ascending above the altar. Nothing came of the project.
In 1848 he submitted a design for a bronze statue of Lord George Bentinck for the proposed Bentinck Memorial in the market-place at Mansfield, Notts (7). Since funds for the statue failed to materialise, the elaborate Gothic canopy designed by the architect Edward Davis was built without Bentinck’s image inside.
Wyatt showed three works at the Great Exhibition of 1851, a model of a quadriga intended for a triumphal arch and equestrian statues of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert (9, 10, 14). The Times said of the prince’s horse that it was ‘admirably modelled and comes nearer to life than any which quite recent art has produced’ (Gunnis). It was later bought by the owner of the Coliseum, who displayed it outside the building.
James Wyatt had talents as a draftsman and sculptor, but was indolent, allowed himself to be overshadowed by his more famous father, and comfortably settled to the life of a gentleman after Matthew Cotes died.
Sylvia Allen
Literary References: Gunnis 1968, 446; Linstrum 1974, 18; Penny 1977, 58-9; Robinson 1979 (2), 188-91; Read 1982, 93; Munsell 1991, 21, 24, 25, 73, 88
Miscellaneous Drawings: Album including drawings for and of sculpture, domestic sketches of the artist’s family, and a design for a monument to ‘W Venables’, perhaps Edward Frederick Venables (†1858) a hero of the Indian Mutiny, VAM E.1896-1948, 40, 118, 119, 164; Mercury tying a sandal, nd, chalk, RIBA (Robinson 1979 (2), 189)