Cast in Stone

has biography | a une biographie

British sculptor in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. His wife, Dorothy Wilkinson (1778-1834), was born in Jamaica and was the daughter of Dr. William Wilkinson. A 'William Wilkinson' is listed as overseer of the Sandy Gutt estate in Jamaica in the 1780s and two men, 'William Wilkinson' and 'William Robert Wilkinson', are listed as plantation owners in the Jamaica Almanacs in the 1820s, but the exact William has not yet been reliably identified.

Westmacott produced a number of works with links to slavery and empire during his lifetime. Aleema Gray and Danielle Thom have argued 'his sculptural practice was undoubtedly entwined with the proceeds and promotion of colonial exploitation, both in terms of his social status and his list of clients'. Examples of these types of clients include Westmacott's church memorials for individuals such as Edward Long (St Mary's Church, Slindon), Richard Pennant (St Tegai’s Church, Llandygai), and Elizabeth Pinder (St John's Parish Church, Barbados), all of whom were connected to slave-ownership in the Caribbean. The statue of Robert Milligan, removed from London's West India Docks in 2020, is perhaps Westmacott's most visible statue associated with chattel slavery, but other statues include the Nelson monument in Liverpool and the Charles James Fox memorial grouping in Westminster Abbey, which depicts a kneeling enslaved African. Westmacott also produced sculptures for India, including the statues of Warren Hastings and William Cavendish Bentinck in Kolkata.

was born | est né

15 July 1775

died in | est mort par

1 September 1856

has nationality | a la nationalité

United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

has type | est de type

artist

is referred to by | est référencé par

Wikipedia

The Victorian Web

Art UK

PSSA

Legacies of British Slavery - Sandy Gutt estate, Jamaica

Legacies of British Slavery - William Wilkinson

Legacies of British Slavery - William Robert Wilkinson

National Portrait Gallery

Historic England - Case Study: Edward Long Memorial, St Mary’s Church, Slindon, West Sussex

Aleema Gray and Danielle Thom, '“The Surrounding Great Work”: Memory, Erasure, and Curating the Built Environment of the West India Docks, 1802–2022' , British Art Studies, 22 (2022)

Joan Coutu, 'Appendix Four: Eighteenth-and Early-Nineteenth-Century Monuments in North America and the British West Indies', in Jean Coutu, Persuasion and Propaganda: Monuments and the Eighteenth-Century British Empire (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2006), pp. 344-364.