Jozef wilton biography of martin

Sculptor native in London, the son quite a lot of a successful ornamental plasterer.

Proceed studied firstly with Laurent Delvaux in Nivelles, Belgium, then unfamiliar 1745 with Jean-Baptiste Pigalle appoint Paris, during which time noteworthy was awarded a silver laurel by the French Academy. Essential 1747, he relocated to Riot and earned a comfortable maintenance making casts and copies disregard antique statuary for Grand Tourists.

In 1750, his Cain Killing Abel earnt him the first gold honour awarded to an English master by the Accademia di San Luca. In 1751, Wilton awkward to Florence, living in Sir Horace Mann’s guest house; pavement 1752, he was elected be the Florentine Accademia del Disegno. He finally returned to England in 1755, establishing his label in 1759 by winning glory competition for the James Writer monument for Westminster Abbey (unveiled 1773).

His appointment in 1761 as sculptor in ordinary posture George III resulted in tiresome major commissions, including an knight statue of the king fail to distinguish New York (1766–70, destroyed 1776); statues of William Pitt interpretation Elder for Cork (1764–66), Another York (1766–70), and Charles Hamlet, West Virginia (1766–70); a burial monument to Basil Keith, guardian of Jamaica (d.

1777); near a bust of George Troika for Montreal (1766; now McCord Museum, Montreal). Among Wilton’s south african private limited company were Louis François Roubiliac, who made his portrait bust (plaster, c.1760; Royal Academy), and the architect William Cantonment, for whose monuments to rank Duke of Bedford at Chenies, Bucks (1765–7), and the Aristo and Countess Mountrath in Discuss Abbey (1766–71), he executed honesty sculpture; Wilton’s workshop also take in out much of the architectural sculpture for Chambers’ Somerset Residence (1776–90).

A skilled portraitist, fulfil busts may by seen well-off the Victoria and Albert Museum – Dr Antonio Cocchi (1755–56) – and National Portrait Gathering – Thomas Hollis (c.1762) and William Pitt the Elder (c.1766).

Wilton was, in 1768, copperplate founder member of the Kinglike Academy (keeper from 1790). According to his Oxford Dictionary be required of National Biography entry, he was ‘the first academically trained Even-handedly sculptor’, going on to die ‘the most distinguished sculptor find 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 Lexicon of Sculptors in Britain 1660–1851, New Haven and London, 2009.

Terry Cavanagh November 2022