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Richard Westmacott




Sir Richard Westmacott, Jr., RA ( 17751856 ) was a British Sculptor . He studied under his father, Richard Westmacott the Elder, before going to Rome in 1793 to study under Antonio Canova . Upon returning to England in 1797, he set up a prodigious studio and began exhibiting at the Royal Academy , 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 in 1837 .

Among his works are the reliefs for the north side of Marble Arch , the sculptures of figures representing 'The Rise of Civilisation' on the pediment of the British Museum , and the Waterloo Vase now in Buckingham Palace Gardens. The enormous urn was sculpted from chunks of Marble earmarked by Napoleon for a trophy commemorating his imagined victory in the Napoleonic Wars and then given to George IV as a gift from the Grand Duke Of Tuscany . Westmacott also sculpted memorials to Pitt The Younger and Charles James Fox in Westminster Abbey ; and to Nelson at Birmingham , Liverpool and Barbados .