William Walcutt (April 28, 1819, Columbus, Ohio – April 22, 1882, New York City) was an American painter and sculptor, best remembered for the Perry Monument in Cleveland, Ohio.[1]
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]
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