William Walcutt

Oliver Hazard Perry (marble, 1860), Perry's Victory and International Peace Memorial.

William Walcutt (April 28, 1818, Columbus, Ohio – April 22, 1882, New York City) was an American painter and sculptor, best remembered for the Perry Monument in Cleveland, Ohio.^[1]

Biography

He studied in London in 1852, followed by two years in Paris 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.^[2]

His most famous work is the Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry Monument (1860), that originally stood in the Public Square in Cleveland, Ohio.^[3] The monument was relocated several times, and since 1991 has stood in Fort Huntington Park, beside the Cuyahoga County Courthouse.^[4] His weathered marble statue of Perry was replaced with a bronze copy in 1928. A second bronze copy stands outside the Rhode Island Statehouse, in Providence, Rhode Island.^[5] The original marble is now displayed inside the visitor center at the Perry's Victory and International Peace Memorial in Put-in-Bay, Ohio.^[6] Walcutt's statue appears on the 2013 "Perry's Victory" quarter.^[7]

His 1857 historical painting, Pulling Down the Statue of George III, is in the collection of Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania.^[8][9] Portraits of Taft family members by him are at the William Howard Taft National Historic Site in Cincinnati, Ohio.^[10][11][12]

A Neoclassical statue by him, Musidora (marble, 1868), is in the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia. He may have modeled the original statue – possibly copied from a European source – for The Boy with the Boot, a zinc fountain sculpture that was patented in 1875 by J. L. Mott Iron Works of New York City. Mott mass-produced the statue into the 1910s (as The Unfortunate Boot); and other manufacturers continued production into the 1950s.^[13] The example in Sandusky, Ohio, moved inside the City Building following vandalism in the 1990s, is credited to Walcutt.^[14]

Walcutt's papers are at the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution.^[15]

• 
  Perry Monument (1860), Public Square, Cleveland, Ohio.
• 
  Musidora (marble, 1868), High Museum of Art.
• 
  The Boy with the Boot (c.1875).

References

1. William Walcutt, from AskArt.
2. Inauguration, p. 126.
3. "Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry Historical Marker".
4. Perry Monument, from The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History.
5. Oliver Hazard Perry, (sculpture), from SIRIS.
6. Perry's Victory & International Peace Memorial, from Touring Ohio.
7. Perry's Victory quarter, from United States Mint.
8. Pulling Down the Statue of George III, from SIRIS.
9. Pulling Down the Statue of George III, from Lafayette College.
10. Alphonzo Taft, (painting), from SIRIS.
11. Louise M. Taft, (painting), from SIRIS.
12. Peter Rawson Taft, (painting), from SIRIS.
13. Grissom, Carol (2009). "Boy with Leaky Boot". Zinc Sculpture in America: 1850–1950. Associated University Presses. pp. 330–333. ISBN 9780874130317. Retrieved 12 April 2016. Lists 33 current or former locations of the statue in the United States.
14. Boy with the Boot (sculpture), from SIRIS.
15. William Walcutt Papers, from Smithsonian Institution.

Sources

• Inauguration of the Perry Statue: at Cleveland, on the tenth of September 1860, (Cleveland City Council, 1860).
• Joseph T. Hannibal, "The Commodore Perry Statue: History and Weathering of Ohio's First Monumental Marble Sculpture," (March 2011).

External links

• "William Walcutt". Find a Grave. Retrieved 2016-04-12.
• Commodore Perry, from Historic Perrysburg.
• A True American: William Walcutt, Nativism, and Nineteenth-Century Art (Fordham University Press, 2022)