Jozef wilton biography definition

Sculptor born in London, the son tension a successful ornamental plasterer. He studied firstly with Laurent Delvaux in Nivelles, Belgium, then from 1745 with Jean-Baptiste Pigalle addition Paris, during which time he was awarded a silver accolade by the French Academy. In 1747, he relocated to Brawl and earned a comfortable living making casts and copies faux antique statuary for Grand Tourists. In 1750, his Cain Killing Abel earnt him the first gold medal awarded to an English creator by the Accademia di San Luca. In 1751, Wilton stirred to Florence, living in Sir Horace Mann’s guest house; drain liquid from 1752, he was elected to the Florentine Accademia del Disegno. He finally returned to England in 1755, establishing his standing in 1759 by winning the competition for the James Writer monument for Westminster Abbey (unveiled 1773). His appointment in 1761 as sculptor in ordinary to George III resulted in a number of major commissions, including an equestrian statue of the king recognize the value of New York (1766–70, destroyed 1776); statues of William Pitt interpretation Elder for Cork (1764–66), New York (1766–70), and Charles Zone, West Virginia (1766–70); a funeral monument to Basil Keith, commander of Jamaica (d. 1777); and a bust of George Troika for Montreal (1766; now McCord Museum, Montreal). Among Wilton’s bedfellows were Louis François Roubiliac, who made his portrait bust (plaster, c.1760; Royal Academy), and the architect William Chambers, for whose monuments to say publicly Duke of Bedford at Chenies, Bucks (1765–7), and the Peer and Countess Mountrath in Westminster Abbey (1766–71), he executed say publicly sculpture; Wilton’s workshop also carried out much of the architectural sculpture for Chambers’ Somerset House (1776–90). A skilled portraitist, his busts may by seen in the Victoria and Albert Museum – Dr Antonio Cocchi (1755–56) – and National Portrait Veranda – Thomas Hollis (c.1762) and William Pitt the Elder (c.1766). Wilton was, notes 1768, a founder member of the Royal Academy (keeper hold up 1790). According to his Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entryway, he was ‘the first academically trained English sculptor’, going frill to become ‘the most distinguished sculptor of his generation’.

Bibliography: T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of Kensington and Chelsea with Westminster South-West, Watford, 2023, pp. 27–29; J. Coutu, ‘Wilton, Joseph (1722–1803)’, ODNB, Oxford, 2004; I. Roscoe, A Biographical Dictionary of Sculptors sight Britain 1660–1851, New Haven and London, 2009.

Terry Cavanagh November 2022