Details of Sculptor

Surname

Wyon

Alternative Surname

First Name

Edward William

Initial of Surname

W

Year of Birth/Baptism

1811

Flourished

Year of Death

1885

Biographical Details

The third son of Thomas Wyon the Elder (1767-1830), chief engraver of the seals, he was born in Blackfriars, London on 12 January 1811 and christened on 27 February at Christ Church, Southwark. Wyon joined the Royal Academy Schools on 22 April 1829 on the recommendation of a Mr Cooper (not EH Baily, as Gunnis thought), giving his address as Nassau Street. In 1830 he exhibited at the Birmingham Society of Artists and in 1831 at the Royal Academy, by which time he was living at 28 Gloucester Street, Queen’s Square, London (18). In 1833 he won a silver medal from the Royal Academy for a model.
His early works appear chiefly to have been portraits, including some relief profiles in wax. Among his subjects were the poets Robert Southey and William Wordsworth (73, 93, 107) and the diplomats Baron Blöme and James Colquhoun (70, 104). In the 1840s he produced ideal works from Shakespeare and Edmund Spenser (84, 121, 116) and a number of monuments, including one designed by Henry Corbould, which incorporates a low relief of the deceased, Caroline Stevens, kneeling in prayer (1). The monument to the missionary Josiah Pratt (4) has a low relief of an angel instructing ‘barbarous nations’, which the Art Journal felt to be ‘beautifully allusive to the charities of the Missionary Society’ (AJ 1846, 188).
Wyon worked for the Art Union of London, modelling a miniature version of John Flaxman RA’s St Michael slaying Satan which was reproduced many times in bronze (8) and a tazza modelled on a Greek design, which was exhibited at the Great Exhibition (117). The modelling of works for reproduction was a recurring feature in Wyon’s art of the 1850s. He modelled a statuette of Marquess Dalhousie (9) in modern dress, leaning on an altar, for a founder called Mr Collis, one of a series of statuettes of eminent men commissioned by the Nepalese Ambassador. Wyon also produced statuettes of literary subjects and a bust of the Duke of Wellington for reproduction by Wedgwood (31).
He continued to receive favourable reviews from the Art Journal, who described his bust of Harriet, Duchess of Sutherland (33), as a ‘work of elevated character’ (AJ 1853, 152), and he was sufficiently well known to receive one of the Mansion House commissions for statues of literary subjects. His figure of Britomart is a classicised rendering of a female from Spenser’s Fairie Queene (12) which stands in the Egyptian Hall with works by Joseph Durham, E C Marshall and Henry Weekes. Further notable commissions for public spaces followed: in 1865 he modelled a statue of Richard Green, having already executed a bust of the shipowner and philanthropist two years earlier (14, 50). Gunnis felt the statue possessed ‘considerable merit’ (Gunnis 1968, 450). It shows Green sitting in an armchair caressing a Newfoundland dog whose head rests on his knee. In 1869 Wyon carved three statues of notable thinkers for London University (65).
His largest commission is the series of more than a dozen reliefs for the interior of Drapers’ Hall, London, provided in the late 1860s (66). These are designed with a good deal of skill and cover a wide iconographic range.
By 1865 the Art Journal had become less enthusiastic about Wyon’s work, saying of his sentimental depiction, Mending the net (126) that it was ‘in treatment merely pictorial and picturesque, unprejudiced by even the first principles of the sculpture art’ (AJ 1865, 172).
He continued to exhibit at the Royal Academy until 1873, when he showed a bust of the Dean of St Paul’s, a characterised portrait with half-closed eyes and luxuriant whiskers (58). Wyon died in 1885.
MGS
Literary References: Graves VIII, 1905-6, 389; Hutchison 1960-2, 181; Gunnis 1968, 449-50; Pyke 1973, 160
Archival References: IGI; RA Admissions; RA Premium list