This article is about public art in Westminster, a district within the City of Westminster in London. For public art in the larger borough, see List of public art in the City of Westminster.
The area's main sculptural showcase is Parliament Square, conceived in the 1860s to improve the setting of the rebuilt Palace of Westminster, to ease traffic flow and as a site for commemorating politicians of note.[1] Statues of the engineers Robert Stephenson and Isambard Kingdom Brunel by Carlo Marochetti were initially considered for the square, but were rejected as not fitting in with the political theme. (They were ultimately erected outside Euston station and on the Victoria Embankment.)[2] The square took on its present configuration in a refurbishment of 1949–1950 by the architect George Grey Wornum, though four statues of twentieth-century figures have since been added.[3]
Erected 2 May 1832 in New Palace Yard; in its current location since 1949. The features are based on the portrait bust of Canning by Francis Leggatt Chantrey, who was "not at all pleased with the preference shewn to Mr. Westmacott".[7]
Unveiled 26 October 1860. Casting of a clay model exhibited at the 1851 Great Exhibition to much acclaim; John Ruskin considered it to be "the only really interesting piece of historical sculpture we have".[8]
Erected in Parliament Square in 1865–1866. Commissioned by Charles Buxton as a memorial to his father Sir Thomas Buxton and his colleagues in the Abolitionist movement, particularly those associated with the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833. Removed in 1949 and re-erected on this site in 1957.[11]
Unveiled 11 July 1874. Derby is represented wearing his robes as Chancellor of Oxford University. The bronze reliefs around the pedestal depicting scenes from his life were executed by Noble's assistant, Horace Montford.[12]
Unveiled 2 February 1876. Palmerston is portrayed in middle age, before he became Prime Minister. The pedestal departs from the "Gothic" model of the nearby statues of Derby and Peel.[13]
Initially a statue of Peel was commissioned from Carlo Marochetti. This was ready by 1853 but was considered to be far too large. Marochetti produced a smaller work which was placed at the entrance to New Palace Yard; this was removed in 1868 and melted down in 1874.[14]
Unveiled 19 April 1883. The statue was the "shrine" of the Primrose League, a Conservative association established in Disraeli's memory. This group had an annual tradition of leaving wreaths in front of the statue on "Primrose Day", the anniversary of the prime minister's death.[16]
Unveiled 19 July 1915. The National Art Collections Fund bought the cast in 1910. Rodin wanted the group situated "near the statue of William the Conqueror" (sic) but eventually agreed on a site in Victoria Tower Gardens.[17] The work was relocated and given its current pedestal in 2004.[18]
Unveiled 18 November 1899.[19] The decision to erect a statue to Cromwell was controversial; the Irish Nationalist Party forced the withdrawal of public funds to pay for the statue. Instead an anonymous donor, rumoured to be Lord Rosebery, paid for the work.[20]
Unveiled July 1920. A replica of the statue of Lincoln in Lincoln Park, Chicago. Initially the statue was to be erected in 1914, but this was postponed until 1917. By that time some favoured an alternative statue by George Grey Barnard; this was eventually erected in Manchester.[23]
Drinking fountain with two groups of a nanny goat and kid
Given by Henry Gage Spicer, the director of a paper firm, for the poor children of the area who used the Gardens as a playground. The extent of "Miss Harris's" involvement in the art deco sculptures is questionable.[24]
The statue of Emmeline Pankhurst was unveiled on 6 March 1930 by Stanley Baldwin and moved to its present site in 1956. The stone screens were added in 1959 as a memorial to her daughter. Two bronze plaques show, on the right, a portrait medallion of Christabel Pankhurst and, on the left, the design on the WSPU prisoners' badge.[25]
Unveiled 22 October 1947 by George VI. Completion of the statue was delayed by the outbreak of the Second World War; the statue was stored at the quarry in Portland for the duration of the conflict.[27]
Unveiled 7 November 1956. Winston Churchill, on his return to power in 1951, wished to erect a statue to Smuts; he was, however, unable to perform the unveiling due to illness. The pedestal is of granite from South Africa.[24]
Unveiled 1 November 1967. A gift by Henry Moore and the Contemporary Art Society.[28] Over the years the work's condition deteriorated because its legal owner was unknown.[29] The House of Commons accepted ownership of the sculpture in 2011; it is now part of the Parliamentary Art Collection.[30]
Unveiled 1 November 1973 by Clementine, Lady Spencer-Churchill. Churchill indicated his desire for a statue of himself in this spot during Wornum's reconfiguration of Parliament Square. An early version of the statue was felt to bear too close a resemblance to Benito Mussolini and had to be modified.[33]
Unveiled 4 May 1977 by Elizabeth II. The two tiers of animals represent the continents: on the lower tier are a lion for Africa, a unicorn for Europe and a tiger for Asia, on the upper an eagle for the Americas, a kangaroo for Australia and a penguin for Antarctica.[35]
Parliament's gift to the Queen on her Golden Jubilee.[39] The inscription around the rim is from Henry VI, Part 3: To carve out dials quaintly, point by point, thereby to see the minutes how they run: how many makes the hour full complete, how many hours brings about the day, how many days will finish up the year, how many years a mortal man may live.[40]
12 grilles set into the existing red brick wall between the gardens and the former Westminster Hospital, commissioned as a Section 106 requirement for the development of the hospital site into upmarket residential accommodation.[38][41]
Unveiled 29 August 2007. Westminster City Council had earlier refused permission for placing the statue in Trafalgar Square adjacent to South Africa House.[42] On a visit to London in 1961, Mandela had joked that one day his statue would replace that of Jan Smuts; they now both have statues in Parliament Square.[43]
Unveiled 25 October 2007 by the Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall. The bronze figure stands on a plinth of slate from Penrhyn Quarry, North Wales.[44]
Unveiled 21 May 2010. Commemorates the 450th anniversary of the founding of Westminster School by Elizabeth I. The sculptor (the son of the poet Stephen Spender) is an old boy of the school.[46]
Commissioned by the Vincent Square Residents Association to mark the bicentenary of the square's creation as playing fields for Westminster School, of which Dean Vincent was headmaster. Based on a portrait by William Owen and inscribed ELOQUERE PUER ELOQUERE ("speak out, boy, speak out"), an oft-heard utterance of the Dean's.[47]
Gigantic sculptures of English fruit, made to appear as if they have fallen from the plane trees nearby.[48] The scheme won the UK Landscape Award for Artworks in 2012.[49]
Unveiled 14 March 2015, on the centenary of Gandhi's return to India from South Africa. The statue is based on a photograph of Gandhi at 10 Downing Street, from a 1931 visit to London in which he met Ramsay MacDonald.[50]
Four marble statues from the altarpiece of the Catholic chapel at the Palace of Whitehall, commissioned by James II and designed by Christopher Wren. The altarpiece was dismantled after the Whitehall Palace fire of 1695. These fragments are in very poor condition.[64]
Baines, Phil; Dixon, Catherine (2003). Signs: Lettering in the environment. London: Laurence King Publishing. ISBN1856693376.
Black, Jonathan (2013). "Making the Rock of Gibraltar: Ivor Roberts-Jones and the Sir Winston Churchill Commission for Parliament Square (1970–73)". In Jonathan, Black; Ayres, Sara (eds.). Abstraction and Reality: The Sculpture of Ivor Roberts-Jones. London: Philip Wilson Publishers. pp. 63–83. ISBN978-1781300107.
Hall, James (2003). "Auguste Rodin, The Burghers of Calais". In Verdi, Richard (ed.). Saved! 100 years of the National Art Collections Fund. London: Scala. pp. 128–133. ISBN9781857593044.
Ward-Jackson, Philip (2011). Public Sculpture of Historic Westminster: Volume 1. Public Sculpture of Britain. Vol. 14. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. ISBN978-1-84631-691-3.
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