William Walcutt (April 28, 1819,

Columbus, Ohio Columbus () is the state capital and the most populous city in the U.S. state of Ohio. With a 2020 census population of 905,748, it is the 14th-most populous city in the U.S., the second-most populous city in the Midwest, after Chicago, and t ...

– April 22, 1882,

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) was an American painter and sculptor, best remembered for the Perry Monument in

Cleveland, Ohio Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...

Biography

He studied in

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

in 1852, followed by two years in

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studying painting with Adolphe Yvon and sculpture at the École Impériale et Spéciale des Beaux-Arts. He returned to the United States in 1854, and opened a studio in New York City. His most famous work is the ''Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry Monument'' (1860), that originally stood in the Public Square in

. The monument was relocated several times, and since 1991 has stood in Fort Huntington Park, beside the

Cuyahoga County Courthouse The Cuyahoga County Courthouse stretches along Lakeside Avenue at the north end of the Cleveland Mall in downtown Cleveland, Ohio. The building was listed on the National Register along with the mall district in 1975. Other notable buildings of t ...

. His weathered marble statue of Perry was replaced with a bronze copy in 1928. A second bronze copy stands outside the

Rhode Island Statehouse The Rhode Island State House, the capitol of the state of Rhode Island, is located at 900 Smith Street just below the crest of Smith Hill, on the border of downtown in Providence. It is a neoclassical building designed by McKim, Mead & White wh ...

, in

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. The original marble is now displayed inside the visitor center at the Perry's Victory and International Peace Memorial in Put-in-Bay, Ohio. Walcutt's statue appears on the 2013 "Perry's Victory"

quarter A quarter is one-fourth, , 25% or 0.25. Quarter or quarters may refer to: Places * Quarter (urban subdivision), a section or area, usually of a town Placenames * Quarter, South Lanarkshire, a settlement in Scotland * Le Quartier, a settlement i ...

. His 1857 historical painting, ''Pulling Down the Statue of George III'', is in the collection of Lafayette College in

Easton, Pennsylvania Easton is a city in, and the county seat of, Northampton County, Pennsylvania, United States. The city's population was 28,127 as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. Easton is located at the confluence of the Lehigh River, a river tha ...

. Portraits of

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members by him are at the

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. A Neoclassical statue by him, ''Musidora'' (marble, 1868), is in the

High Museum of Art The High Museum of Art (colloquially the High) is the largest museum for visual art in the Southeastern United States. Located in Atlanta, Georgia (on Peachtree Street in Midtown, the city's arts district), the High is 312,000 square feet (28, ...

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. He may have modeled the original statue – possibly copied from a European source – for '' The Boy with the Boot'', a

zinc Zinc is a chemical element with the symbol Zn and atomic number 30. Zinc is a slightly brittle metal at room temperature and has a shiny-greyish appearance when oxidation is removed. It is the first element in group 12 (IIB) of the periodi ...

fountain sculpture that was patented in 1875 by

J. L. Mott Iron Works The J. L. Mott Iron Works was an American hardware dealer and manufacturer during the late 19th century. It operated in New York and was relocated to Trenton, New Jersey, where it ceased operations in the 1920s. History The J. L. Mott Iron Work ...

of New York City. Mott mass-produced the statue into the 1910s (as ''The Unfortunate Boot''); and other manufacturers continued production into the 1950s. The example in

Sandusky, Ohio Sandusky ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Erie County, Ohio, Erie County, Ohio, United States. Situated along the shores of Lake Erie in the northern part of the state, Sandusky is located roughly midway between Toledo, Ohio, Toledo ( wes ...

, moved inside the City Building following vandalism in the 1990s, is credited to Walcutt. Walcutt's papers are at the

Archives of American Art The Archives of American Art is the largest collection of primary resources documenting the history of the visual arts in the United States. More than 20 million items of original material are housed in the Archives' research centers in Washingt ...

at the Smithsonian Institution.William Walcutt Papers
from Smithsonian Institution. File:Commodore Perry's monument, by E. & H.T. Anthony (Firm).png, Perry Monument (1860), Public Square, Cleveland, Ohio. File:'Musidora' by William Walcutt, 1868, High Museum.JPG, ''Musidora'' (marble, 1868),

. File:Grabado del Niño de la bota.jpg, ''The Boy with the Boot'' (1875).

References

Sources

''Inauguration of the Perry Statue: at Cleveland, on the tenth of September 1860'', (Cleveland City Council, 1860).
*Joseph T. Hannibal

(March 2011).

External links

*

from Historic Perrysburg. {{DEFAULTSORT:Walcutt, William 1819 births 1882 deaths 19th-century American sculptors 19th-century American male artists American male sculptors