Savoy Chapel; it was unfortunately destroyed by fire in 1864. The original cast, however, was sold with Watson's effects and was purchased by Messrs. Nelson of Carlisle.
Watson died at his residence, 13 Upper Gloucester Place, Dorset Square, on 28 Oct. 1847, and was buried in Highgate cemetery. There is a medallion of Watson by George Nelson in the transept of Carlisle Cathedral. He was a man of quiet ways and insignificant appearance, with no friends to push his claims to notice, and when at last his ability, fine taste, and knowledge of work raised him to fame and fortune, the disease which had been aggravated by the many anxieties in his career proved fatal to him.
During his last illness Watson caused those of his models that he considered inferior work to be destroyed. His electrotypes, which were pronounced by his contemporaries to be some of the best work of the time, he bequeathed to his friend Sir Charles Lock Eastlake [q. v.]
The principal works executed by Watson, and not already mentioned, were the bas-relief on Moxhay's hall of commerce, Threadneedle Street, London; the statue of queen Elizabeth in the Royal Exchange; two figures, ‘Hebe’ and ‘Iris,’ for Barry's new gates for the Marquis of Lansdowne's seat at Bowood (the sketches were exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1847); full-length colossal statues of Major Aglionby and William, earl of Lonsdale, both in Carlisle; a terra-cotta alto-relievo, ‘Little Children, come unto Me,’ erected over a doorway at Little Holland House; and one of the four bas-reliefs of the Nelson monument, ‘The Battle of St. Vincent.’
After his death a set of fifteen drawings he had executed as illustrations to the poem on ‘Human Life’ by his friend Samuel Rogers [q. v.] was lithographed by William Doeg of Carlisle. One of the cartoons, ‘Philanthropy,’ was engraved on wood by W. J. Linton as an illustration to the ‘Life and Works of Watson’ by Henry Lonsdale (p. 198). He exhibited between 1829 and 1847 nineteen times at the Royal Academy, and twice at the Suffolk Street Gallery.
[Lonsdale's Life of Watson; Art Journal, 1848, p. 27; Royal Academy Cat.; Graves's Dict. of Artists.]
WATSON, PETER WILLIAM (1761–1830), botanist, was born at Hull in 1761, being baptised at Holy Trinity Church on 26 Aug. in that year. Educated at the grammar school under Joseph Milner [q. v.], and occupied in early life in trade; he was an enthusiastic student of botany, entomology, chemistry, and mineralogy, and a skilful landscape-painter. In 1812 he took an active part in the establishment of the Hull botanic garden. In his ‘Dendrologia Britannica’ he alludes (p. xii) to his ‘own endeavours to furnish the institution with many indigenous plants, which I collected at considerable expense and labour, by traversing the whole East Riding … in my gig, with proper apparatus for cutting up roots, collecting seeds, &c. of the rarer sorts, whose habitats had been rendered familiar to me from numerous previous herborisations.’ In 1824 and the following year he issued, in twenty-four parts, his ‘Dendrologia Britannica; or Trees and Shrubs that will live in the Open Air of Britain throughout the year.’ This work, which Loudon describes (Arboretum Britannicum, p. 188) as ‘the most scientific work devoted exclusively to trees which has hitherto been published in England,’ was completed in two octavo volumes, printed in Hull and published in London in 1825. It contains an introduction to descriptive botany, occupying seventy-two pages and 172 excellent coloured plates of exotic trees and shrubs, each accompanied by a page of technical description. Watson died at Cottingham, near Hull, on 1 Sept. 1830. He was elected a fellow of the Linnean Society in 1824.
[R. W. Corlass's Sketches of Hull Authors, 1879.]
WATSON, RICHARD (1612–1685), royalist divine, controversialist and poet, son of William Watson, merchant, was born in the parish of St. Katharine Cree, London, in 1612, and is said to have studied for five years in the Merchant Taylors' school under Mr. Augur (Venn, Admissions to Gonville and Caius College, p. 170), though his name does not occur in the ‘Registers’ (ed. Robinson, 1882). On 22 Dec. 1628 he was admitted a sizar of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. He proceeded B.A. in 1632, commenced M.A. in 1636, and was elected a junior fellow of his college in September 1636. From 1636 to 1642 he was headmaster of the Perse grammar school at Cambridge. He held the college offices of lecturer in rhetoric in 1639, Greek lecturer in 1642, and Hebrew lecturer in 1643. Being a zealous defender of the church of England, he preached a sermon ‘touching schism’ (Cambridge, 1642, 4to) at St. Mary's, the university church, in 1642, and, as this was highly offensive to the presbyterians, he was ejected from his fellowship and his school. Afterwards, ‘to avoid their barbarities,’ he withdrew to France, and was patronised at Paris by Sir
