Sir Richard Westmacott, Jr.,
RAThe Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly, London, England. The Royal Academy of Arts has a unique position in being an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment...
(July 15 1775 – September 1 1856) was a
BritishThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of Ireland, and many small islands...
sculptorSculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard and/or plastic material, sound, and/or text and or light, commonly stone , metal, glass, or wood. Some sculptures are created directly by finding or carving; others are assembled, built together and fired, welded, molded,...
.
He studied under his father, Richard Westmacott the Elder, before going to
RomeRome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated municipality , with over 2.7 million residents in , while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat to be 3.46 million. The metropolitan area of Rome is estimated by OECD to have a population of 3.7 million...
in 1793 to study under
Antonio CanovaAntonio Canova was an Italian sculptor who became famous for his marble sculptures that delicately rendered nude flesh...
. Upon returning to England in 1797, he set up a prodigious studio (
John Edward CarewJohn Edward Carew was a notable Irish sculptor during the 19th century.Thought to be the son of a local stonecutter, Carew was born in Tramore, and studied art in Dublin...
and
Musgrave WatsonMusgrave Lewthwaite Watson was an English sculptor of the early 19th century.Watson was born in Cumberland, being christened on 8 March 1804 at Hawksdale, near Dalston...
gained experience here) and began exhibiting at the
Royal AcademyThe Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly, London, England. The Royal Academy of Arts has a unique position in being an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment...
, where his diploma work,
Jupiter and Ganymede, can still be seen.
Sir Richard Westmacott, Jr.,
RAThe Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly, London, England. The Royal Academy of Arts has a unique position in being an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment...
(July 15 1775 – September 1 1856) was a
BritishThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of Ireland, and many small islands...
sculptorSculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard and/or plastic material, sound, and/or text and or light, commonly stone , metal, glass, or wood. Some sculptures are created directly by finding or carving; others are assembled, built together and fired, welded, molded,...
.
He studied under his father, Richard Westmacott the Elder, before going to
RomeRome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated municipality , with over 2.7 million residents in , while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat to be 3.46 million. The metropolitan area of Rome is estimated by OECD to have a population of 3.7 million...
in 1793 to study under
Antonio CanovaAntonio Canova was an Italian sculptor who became famous for his marble sculptures that delicately rendered nude flesh...
. Upon returning to England in 1797, he set up a prodigious studio (
John Edward CarewJohn Edward Carew was a notable Irish sculptor during the 19th century.Thought to be the son of a local stonecutter, Carew was born in Tramore, and studied art in Dublin...
and
Musgrave WatsonMusgrave Lewthwaite Watson was an English sculptor of the early 19th century.Watson was born in Cumberland, being christened on 8 March 1804 at Hawksdale, near Dalston...
gained experience here) and began exhibiting at the
Royal AcademyThe Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly, London, England. The Royal Academy of Arts has a unique position in being an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment...
, where his diploma work,
Jupiter and Ganymede, can still be seen. He was made a Royal Academician in 1811 and was professor of sculpture at the RA from 1827. He received his knighthood on 19 July 1837.
Among his works are the reliefs for the north side of
Marble ArchMarble Arch is a white Carrara-marble monument at the junction of Oxford Street, Park Lane, and Edgware Road, almost directly opposite Speakers' Corner in Hyde Park in London, England. The arch is on a large traffic island, which also includes a very small park, in the midst of swirling traffic...
, the sculptures of figures representing 'The Rise of Civilisation' on the pediment of the
British MuseumThe British Museum is a museum of human history and culture situated in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from...
, and the
Waterloo VaseThe Waterloo Vase is a great urn, 15ft high and weighing 20 tons, fashioned from a single piece of Carrara marble. Since 1906, it has been used as a garden ornament in the garden of Buckingham Palace, London....
now in
Buckingham PalaceBuckingham Palace is the official London residence of the British monarch. Located in the City of Westminster, the palace is a setting for state occasions and royal hospitality...
Gardens. The enormous urn was sculpted from chunks of
marbleMarble is a non foliated metamorphic rock resulting from the metamorphism of limestone, composed mostly of calcite . It is extensively used for sculpture, as a building material, and in many other applications...
earmarked by Napoleon for a trophy commemorating his imagined victory in the
Napoleonic WarsThe Napoleonic Wars were a series of conflicts declared against Napoleon's French Empire and changing sets of European allies by opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1815. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they revolutionized European armies and played...
and then given to
George IVGeorge IV was the king of Hanover and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from the death of his father, George III, on 29 January 1820 until his own death ten years later...
as a gift from the Grand Duke of Tuscany. Westmacott also sculpted
memorialsA church monument is an architectural or sculptural memorial to a dead person or persons, located within a Christian church. It can take various forms, from a simple wall tablet to a large and elaborate structure which may include an effigy of the deceased person and other figures of familial or...
to
Pitt the YoungerWilliam Pitt, the Younger was a British politician of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He became the youngest Prime Minister in 1783 at the age of 24 . He left office in 1801, but was Prime Minister again from 1804 until his death in 1806...
and
Charles James FoxCharles James Fox was a prominent British Whig statesman whose parliamentary career spanned thirty-eight years of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and who was particularly noted for being the arch-rival of William Pitt the Younger...
in
Westminster AbbeyThe Collegiate Church of St Peter at Westminster, which is almost always referred to popularly and informally as Westminster Abbey, is a large, mainly Gothic church, in Westminster, London, just to the west of the Palace of Westminster...
; and to
NelsonVice Admiral Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson, 1st Duke of Bronté, KB was a British flag officer famous for his service in the Royal Navy, particularly during the Napoleonic Wars...
at Bull Ring, Birmingham,
LiverpoolLiverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
(
Nelson Monument, LiverpoolThe Nelson Monument is a memorial to Admiral Horatio Nelson, in Exchange Flags, Liverpool, England. It was designed by Matthew Cotes Wyatt and sculpted by Richard Westmacott. It stands to the north of the Town Hall and was uveiled in 1813.-External links:**...
) and
BarbadosBarbados , situated just east of the Caribbean Sea, is an independent West Indian Continental Island-nation in the western Atlantic Ocean. For over three centuries Barbados was a colony and protectorate of the United Kingdom; and still currently maintains Queen Elizabeth II as head of state...
. The
statue of Horatio Nelson, BirminghamThe Statue of Horatio Nelson by Richard Westmacott Jr., RA stands in the Bull Ring, Birmingham, England.-Subscription:This bronze statue was the first publicly funded statue in Birmingham, and the first statue of Horatio Nelson in Britain...
was the first statue of Nelson in Britain. The Duke of Bedfordshire, a statue in
Russell SquareRussell Square is a large garden square in Bloomsbury, in the London Borough of Camden. It is near the University of London's main buildings and the British Museum. To the north is Woburn Place and to the south-east is Southampton Row...
of the agriculturalist and developer
Francis Russell, 5th Duke of BedfordFrancis Russell, 5th Duke of Bedford , eldest son of Francis Russell, Marquess of Tavistock , by his wife, Elizabeth , daughter of William Keppel, 2nd Earl of Albemarle, was baptized on 23 July 1765....
is by Richard Westmacott.
Westmacott lived and died at 14 South Audley Street,
MayfairMayfair is an area of central London, England, within the City of Westminster.-History:Mayfair is named after the annual fortnight-long May Fair that took place on the site that is Shepherd Market today...
, London (commemorated by a
blue plaqueA blue plaque is a permanent sign installed in a public place to commemorate a link between that location and a famous person or event, serving as a historical marker...
). His son,
Richard Westmacott (the younger)Richard Westmacott - also sometimes described as Richard Westmacott III - was a prominent English sculptor of the early- and mid-19th century.Born in London, he was the son of Sir Richard Westmacott , and followed closely in his father's...
, followed closely in his footsteps becoming a notable sculptor, Academician and RA professor of sculpture.