Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 62.djvu/158

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Wilton
152
Wilton

pointment of chairman of committees of the whole house during the short administration of his old colleague, who had become Earl of Derby. As colonel (1842-72) of the 3rd royal Lancashire militia, he went in command of his regiment on the outbreak of the Crimean war in 1854 to Gibraltar, and on his return was appointed an aide-de-camp to her majesty. On the cotton famine relief committee formed in Manchester to cope with the terrible distress caused by the war in America, he took an active and important part, inducing the president of the poor-law board to accept a resolution of the House of Commons enabling boards of guardians to raise loans on the security of the rates.

In Lord Derby's government of 1867 Wilson-Patten was appointed chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, and was made a privy councillor. In the year following he became chief secretary for Ireland, a post he held till the resignation of Lord Derby, three months later. After his elevation to the upper house as Baron Winmarleigh in 1874 he seldom took part in its debates, but in 1882 he appeared there to deliver what was his last speech, in warm advocacy of the bill for the construction of the Manchester Ship Canal. He died at his seat near Garstang, Lancashire, on 12 July 1892. He married, in 1828, Anna Maria, daughter and coheiress of his paternal uncle, Peter Patten-Bold of Bold. By her he had a son, Eustace John, who became a captain in the lifeguards, but died in 1873, leaving an only son, John Alfred, who died in 1889. The barony thus became extinct on Winmarleigh's death. In the museum at Warrington there is a bust of Winmarleigh in marble, by G. Bromfield Adams, which is a good likeness. There is also a life-sized recumbent figure in marble in the parish church of Warrington, and at Lancaster there is a portrait in oil in the Royal Albert Asylum.

[Annual Register, 1892, p. 179; G. E. C[okayne]'s Complete Peerage, viii. 189; Times, July 1892.]

A. N.


WILTON, JOSEPH (1722–1803), sculptor and royal academician, born in London on 10 July 1722, was son of a worker in ornamental plaster, who carried on a large manufacture of plaster decorations in the French style at Hedge Lane, Charing Cross, his extensive workshops being in Edward Street, Cavendish Square. Here Wilton was grounded in that skill for decorative sculpture which was the strongest feature of his art in after life. He was, however, first educated at Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire, for the profession of a civil engineer, but showed an early taste for the sculptor's art. His father therefore placed him under Laurent Delvaux [q. v,], the sculptor, who had returned to his native country, and resided at Nivelles in Brabant. In 1744 Wilton left Delvaux to go and study in the French Academy at Paris under the French sculptor, Jean Baptiste Pigalle. Here he made great progress, gained a silver medal, and learnt to work in marble. In 1747 Wilton went, in company with his fellow-sculptor, Louis François Roubillac [q. v.], to Rome, and three years later gained the gold medal given to sculpture by Benedict XIV on the occasion of his jubilee. He found many patrons in Rome, among the most generous and influential of whom was William Locke [q. v.] of Norbury Park. After visiting Naples, Wilton went to Florence in 1751, where he resided for about four years. He received many commissions for copies from the antique and for completing mutilated statues. In May 1755 he returned to England in company with his lifelong friends Sir William Chambers [q. v.], the eminent architect, and Giovanni Battista Cipriani [q. v.], the decorative painter. He settled in his father's house at Charing Cross, and his talents were soon in great requisition. In 1758, when Charles Lennox, third duke of Richmond and Lennox [q. v.], opened his gallery of painting and sculpture in his house at Whitehall for gratuitous instruction to students, Wilton and Cipriani were chosen by the duke to be directors of the gallery. Wilton was also appointed state-coach carver to the king, and in consequence of his increase of business he erected extensive workshops in what was afterward8 Foley Place, occupying himself a large house at the corner of Portland Street close by. The state coach used by George III at his coronation was constructed from Wilton's designs. Wilton was appointed sculptor to his majesty. He contributed a marble bust to the first exhibition of the Society of Artists in 1760, and in the following year sent busts of Roubillac and Oliver Cromwell. He continued to exhibit busts and bas-reliefs with them up to 1766, in which year he sent another bust of Oliver Cromwell, 'from the noted cast of his face preserved in the Great Duke's gallery at Florence.' Wilton was one of the original foundation members of the Royal Academy, and contributed to its first exhibition in 1769. Succeeding to a large fortune at the death of his father, Wilton ceased to be dependent on his profession, and was but an occasional exhibitor at the Royal Academy. His work, too, became more and more confined to the modelling alone. He