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Father of sculptor Joseph Wilton.
Notes from Biog. Dictionary of Sculptors.... Yale 2009.
An ornamental plasterer, nothing is known of his early life
or training, except that he took a wife, Elizabeth, before 1722, when his first
son, Joseph Wilton was born.
In 1737 he worked with Thomas Carter I providing
plasterwork for a building belonging to William Pulteney in Chandos Place,
London and he was also responsible for the elaborate rococo plasterwork
ceilings of the Foundling Hospital
By the 1740s Wilton must have been relatively affluent since
he paid for an expensive Continental training for his son in the Nivelles
workshop of Laurent Delvaux. Delvaux and Wilton may have had business dealings
for in his notebooks of 1740-1 the Flemish sculptor refers to ‘Mr Wllm.
Wilton,’ then living in Margaret Street, near Cavendish Square (Jacobs 1997,
58).
Wilton founded a highly-profitable factory producing
papier-mâché ornaments for chimneypieces and mirror frames. J T Smith wrote
that the workshops employed ‘hundreds of people, including children’ (Smith
1828, 2, 167). In addition to his Cavendish Square premises, Wilton also had
works on the south-west corner of Hedge Lane, Charing Cross. He later retired
to Wanstead, Essex, and he was buried in Wanstead parish church, Essex on 27
January 1768.
In his will he left three residential properties in
Cavendish Square jointly to his friend, the architect William Chambers, and to
his son Joseph. From the profits made on leasing them, the beneficiaries were
instructed to pay an annuity of £50 to another son, William Wilton II, and to
support the education of Wilton’s three grandchildren, Frances Wilton, and two
boys. He also left three guineas to his nephew and former pupil Thomas Collins
to buy a ring. Administration of the trust occasioned some spirited
correspondence between Chambers and Joseph Wilton.
MGS
Literary References: Builder 1859, 849; Survey of London
1970, vol 36, 264; Allen 1983, 196; Coutu 1996, 175-85
Archival References: Chambers’s Letter-Books Add MS 41133,
fols, 94
Miscellaneous Drawings: Three designs for unidentified
monuments VAM E 1185-87-1965
Will: PROB 11/935/316-318
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and much more info on the Sarti family see -
http://217.204.55.158/henrymoore/sculptor/browserecord.php?-action=browse&-recid=2361
http://www.npg.org.uk/research/programmes/british-bronze-founders-and-plaster-figure-makers-1800-1980-1/british-bronze-founders-and-plaster-figure-makers-1800-1980-s.php
The Sarti Brothers.
I have lifted the following from the NPG website
https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/research/programmes/british-bronze-founders-and-plaster-figure-makers-1800-1980-1/british-sculpture-makers-s#:~:text=Loft%20&%20Co%20at%2092%20Dean%20St.&text=suitably%20adapted%20for%20Halls%2C%20Stair%2DCases%2C%20Pier%2DTables%2C%20Side%2DBoards%2C,imitate%20real%20Bronze%2C%20Terra%20Cota%2C%20Stone%2C%20&c'.
Anthony Sarti (d.1851) has been studied by Timothy Clifford
(Clifford 1992 pp.62-3). However, it is suggested here that he is not the same
person as Anthony Sartine and that he was not a plaster figure
maker.
The Lofts advert above suggests otherwise!
Sarti exhibited anatomical figures in wax of Venus and Adonis at the
Florentine Anatomical Gallery at 27 Margaret St in 1839 and a wider range of
figures at 209 Regent St in 1847 (Richard Altick, The Shows of London, 1978,
p.340; see also The Times 28 March 1839, 8 June 1847).
In his will, made 19 August 1847 and proved 12 February
1851, Antonio Sarti, modellist of Spur St, Leicester Square, formerly of
Tuscany, made Selina Isabella Sarti (otherwise Doti(?), subsequently Barker)
one of his executors, describing her as having had the management of his
business in this country for many years. He divided his estate in three with
one third going to his wife, Susan, another third to Selina Isabella Sarti, and
the final third to his sister, Carolina Francois in Florence, for the care of
Fanny Sarti, age 10. He refers to his estate as consisting, among other things,
of ‘anatomical and other models, plates and prints and other specimens of
considerable value’.
Isabella Selina Sarti, to be identified as Selina Isabella
Sarti, married Daniel Barker in the Bradford district in 1851, shortly before
Anthony Sarti’s will was proved. She and her husband continued to exhibit wax
anatomical figures, as can be seen from a handbill for a display at Boston in
Lincolnshire in about 1854 entitled ‘The late Sarti's new Florentine anatomical
model’.
Peter Sarti - Pietro Angelo Sarti.
fl.
working in London until 1838.
Peter Sarti, London by 1816, 6 Upper King St, Bloomsbury
1822-1826, 59 Greek St, Soho by 1825-1833, 92 Dean St, Soho 1833-1838,
Southampton St 1836. Plaster cast figure maker and moulder.
Peter, Pier, Petro or Pietro Angelo Sarti (1793-1868) has
been described as the figure maker who above all, for capacity, erudition and
exceptional talent, merits the memory and admiration of posterity (Paolo
Tagliasacchi, Coreglia Antelminelli: Patria del Figurinaio, Coreglia
Antelminelli, 2008, p.127).
He was born at Vetriano, a village near Pescaglia
in the province of Lucca. He played a prominent part in figure making in London
in the early 19th century. Working initially for Matthew Mazzoni (qv), he was
employed by Richard Westmacott (qv) in making plaster casts of classical
marbles in the British Museum in the period 1816-23 (Jenkins 1990 pp.101-5). He
published a poem in London in 1838 as Pier Angelo Sarti, La Reggia dell’
Invidia: cantica, shortly before returning to Italy, where he died at Lucca in
1868. His work has been studied by Ian Jenkins, to whom this account is
indebted.
Described as Petro Angel Sarti, figure maker and moulder, he
gave evidence to a Select Committee on the British Museum in 1835 (see Sources
below). In his responses, he stated that he had been in France before coming to
London, where he was under Mazzoni ‘for about five years, moulding continuously
down at the [British] Museum’, probably from about 1816. He said that he had
been working for Westmacott for years, for Rundell & Bridge (qv) for models
and for Chantrey (qv).
To mould statues, Sarti told the Select Committee, he would
apply for permission through a gentleman of rank to Westmacott (qv), who acted
in a private capacity for the Museum. He said that the Theseus statue in the
Elgin collection had been moulded three times, twice by himself for Benjamin
Robert Haydon and for Richard Westmacott (the statue is now identified as
Dionysos; early cast in Royal Academy).
A list of marbles in the British Museum
moulded by Sarti, including the Rosetta Stone for the Government of Prussia,
was appended to the Select Committee report. Sarti reported that he had
obtained permission to mould the bust of Homer and was able to sell 80 casts in
the first month (this is presumably the Arundel head in bronze, now identified
as perhaps of Sophocles).
In 1836 Pietro Angelo Sarti of Southampton St, described as
‘the most substantial of the formatori resident in London’, formerly in the
employ of Westmacott at the Museum, was contracted to become the Museum’s first
official maker of plaster casts, but the following year he announced his
intention of returning to his native Italy, resigning his business to Loft
& Fletcher (Jenkins 1990 p.104, see also Ian Jenkins, Archaeologists &
Aesthetes in the Sculpture Galleries of the British Museum 1800-1939, 1992, p.36).
Peter Sarti was in business independently as a plaster cast
figure maker by 1822 and was described as a mould figure maker in Robson’s 1826
London directory.
Sarti’s premises at 59 Greek St were shared in 1827 and 1829
variously with a piano maker, a cabinet maker, an ironmonger and the
booksellers, Messrs Treutel Wurt and Co of 30 Soho Square, according to their
insurance policy (London Metropolitan Archives, Sun Fire Office policy
registers, 516/1069311, 527/1099411).
Sarti was at 92 Dean St, 1833-7 and perhaps
later, sometimes listed as Pedro Sarti, and was succeeded in business there by
James Loft and Angus Fletcher as sculptors and moulders until 1839, later by
Loft and William Scoular as sculptors, figure makers and moulders until 1844,
and then by Scoular alone until his death in 1854 (London Gazette 10 September
1839, 15 November 1844; Survey of London, vol.33, St Anne Soho, 1966, p.140).
Subsequently, the premises were occupied by Scoular & Edwards in 1855,
while James Loft went on to trade from 29 Clipstone St. For another figure
maker by the name of Pietro Sarti (d.1854), see Alexander Sarti, above.
A good idea of the range of Sarti’s
stock-in-trade can be had from the catalogue issued by his successors in
January 1839, very soon after he had sold the business (see Loft & Co.’s,
late Sarti’s, Gallery of Casts from Antique and Modern Statues, Busts, Bassi
Relievi, &c, 1839 (Tate Library).
The most expensive antique statue was the
7ft Group of Laocoon at £30, while the most expensive modern work was Canova’s
6ft Group of the Graces at £21. The following large-scale works by British sculptors
were stocked: Westmacott’s Venus and Cupid at £5.10s, Distressed Mother at £6
and Nymph at £4, Baily’s Eve at £5 and Maternal Affection at £6, and Nollekens’
Mercury and Juno, both at 8s. The catalogue featured small-scale copies from
modern works, antique busts, modern busts (numerous figures from British
history, mostly at 15s), bas reliefs including Flaxman’s frieze from Covent
Garden Theatre and his Mercury and Pandora, animal torsos, pedestals, brackets
and candelabra.
Peter Sarti is surely the ‘Sarti of Greek-Street’, described
by John Thomas Smith as being in possession of moulds of John Deare’s
bas-reliefs, Summer and Autumn, and also of ‘fifty-two varieties of Fiamingo’s
children’ (John Thomas Smith, Nollekens and his times, 1828, vol.2, p.313).
For
the Athenaeum Club in London in 1830 he supplied figures of Diana dressing and
Venus victorious at £8.8s each and eleven busts of British worthies at £1.10s
each (Joshua Reynolds cost £3.3s since it needed moulding as well; Sarti was
not allowed by the Royal Academy to retain the mould) (John Kenworthy-Browne, A
Temple of British Worthies: The Historic Portrait Busts at the Athenaeum, 2011,
especially pp.29-30). Sarti produced various busts, Dryden, Milton and Locke,
signed (Wimpole Hall, Cambridgeshire), and Lord Tenterden, 1833 (untraced), as
well as figures, Apollo and Diana, 1835, for Goldsmiths’ Hall (Roscoe 2009).
https://bathartandarchitecture.blogspot.com/2021/02/the-sarti-busts-at-wimpole-hall.html
In 1835 and following, through Sarti and Sir Richard
Westmacott, a complete set of casts from the Elgin marbles was purchased by the
Board of Manufacturers at Edinburgh for the Trustees’ Academy, leading the
Trustees to sell off their earlier purchase of some casts from Matthew Mazzoni
(qv); the Sarti/Westmacott casts are now in the Edinburgh College of Art and
interestingly it has now been shown that those from the west frieze of the
Parthenon were cast from moulds made for Elgin in Athens by Bernardino Ledus
and Vincenzo Rosati, c.1802 (see Margaret Stewart, ‘Scenery and Scenes: the
plaster cast collection and its architecture at Edinburgh College of Art’,
forthcoming article). Sarti provided other casts for the Trustees’ Academy, now
in Edinburgh College of Art, including the Vatican Crouching Venus, 1834,
Castor and Pollux, 1835, with inset impressed metal label: P. SARTI/ 59/ GREEK
STREET/ SOHO SQUARE (the cast replaced Sarti’s poor quality first cast) and
Actaeon, 1838 (University of Edinburgh Art Collection database, where it is
noted that Sarti was paid for three unspecified casts on 9 February 1835).
Through George Basevi, architect of the Fitzwilliam Museum
then in construction, in 1837 Sarti supplied for use in ornamenting the museum
a pair of caryatids from the Elgin collection at £21 and 12 bas reliefs from
the same collection for £24 (Cambridge University Library, University Archives,
Prem.II.14 item 111, see also CUR 30.1 item 80 and Syn.Ac.1 p.12).
The following references may relate to Peter Sarti, or
possibly to Alexander Sarti (qv). ‘Sarti’ was a purchaser at Joseph Nollekens’
sale in 1823, acquiring various casts, models and work in terracotta (Clifford
1992 p.63). ‘The Dog brought one thousand guineas, and was purchased by Mr.
Duncombe, of Yorkshire; but a mould of it belongs to Sarti, the Figuremaker, a
cast from which makes a most noble appearance in a gentleman's hall.’ (John
Thomas Smith, Nollekens and his times, 1828, vol.2, p.292). In 1826, ‘Sarti’
was paid 10s for unspecified work for John Flaxman (Roscoe 2009). ‘Sarti’ was
used by John Linnell for plaster casts in 1827 (‘plasters’ at £3.10s.8d) and
1830 (two bas reliefs at £2.2s), as the artist’s account book shows
(Fitzwilliam Museum, MS 21-2000). In 1831, ‘Sarti’ was paid £7.16s.6d for
taking down architectural casts at Sir Thomas Lawrence's house in Russell
Square, on the instructions of Lawrence's executor (V&A National Art
Library, MSL/1938/1923).
Sources: Paolo Tagliasacchi, Coreglia Antelminelli: Patria
del Figurinaio, Coreglia Antelminelli, 2008, pp.127-30, repr. Sarti’s portrait.
House of Commons, Report from the Select Committee on the Condition, Management
and Affairs of the British Museum, 1835, pp.255-8 and Appendix no.31 on p.445,
available though Google Book Search; Roscoe 2009. For abbreviations, see
Resources and bibliography.
For the group of plaster busts in the Athenaeum Club written by Kenworthy Brown see -
http://www.victorianweb.org/sculpture/athenaeum/catalogue.html
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