|
Title:
|
Monument to William Beckett
|
Artist: |
Baron Carlo Marochetti
|
William Beckett was a banker and tory MP, who had gone over to the anti-protectionist lobby with Sir Robert Peel over the Corn Laws. His obituary in the Leeds Times (31 Jan.1863) stated that the town's tradesman had felt themselves greatly beholden to him for the support he had given to their businesses during a banking crisis in 1825. Leeds institutions to which he later gave support were the Infirmary and the Philosophical Hall. When he died in Brighton in 1863, it was said that he would be interred temporarily in Kensal Green Cemetery, but his remains would be removed as soon as possible to the church being built at Headingley, which is now known as St. Chad's Outer Headingley, in Leeds. Beckett had contributed greatly to the building fund for that church, and had given the land on which that church was built, and Edmund Denison Beckett, William's nephew had been one of the church's architects. However, as the epitaph on this monument states, Beckett's body remained at Kensal Green, and his monument was erected in Leeds Parish Church, in the centre of town. William Beckett had played a leading role in the committee which set up Marochetti's statue of the Duke of Wellington outside Leeds Town Hall. He had chaired the meeting on 26 Aug. 1863, at which it was decided to commission a "colossal statue" of the Duke from Marochetti (Times, 29 Aug. 1853), and had contributed £200 to the subscription for it. W.H. Moore's 1877 History of the Parish Church of Leeds (p.23) described the monument as "a beautiful monument", consisting of "a square-panelled pedestal, upon the front of which is a fine life-like medallion of himself; this is surmounted by a figure emblematic of Charity. It is a masterpiece of Marochetti, ONE OF, if not THE LAST of his works". The description of the portrait of Beckett as a "medallion" is not really accurate, since the portrait is a large, very much head-and-shoulders one in quite high relief. The monument was commissioned by Beckett's widow, and the architectural element of it was carried out to a design by local architects, Dobson and Chorley. It is interesting that Marochetti should have chosen to represent Charity, who is more usually shown as a nursing mother, as an angel here. The Leeds Mercury (22 Feb. 1868) said of the two boys accompanying this angel that one seemed "hungering for food, the other for instruction". The final work on the monument was done immediately after Marochetti's own death by an assistant, Robert Glassby, who would later give his services to the sculptor Joseph Edgar Boehm. Marochetti also sculpted a tomb for Beckett's brother-in-law, Admiral Henry Meynell (d.1865), which is in St Peter's church in Yoxall (Staffs). (see entry for that)
|
|
|
Material(s): |
Marble
|
Medium: |
Unassigned |
Finish: |
- |
Technique: |
Carved |
Genre: |
Unassigned
|
Location: |
Leeds (Yorks), Parish Church, , ,
|
Colours: |
|
Year: |
1868 |
Height: |
0 metres |
Width: |
0 metres |
Depth: |
0 metres |
|
Key: |
5771 |
Acc. No.: |
5771 |
Col. No.: |
5771 |
Number of views: |
2787 |
|
|