Shakespeare Wood

Other names: Shakspere, Shakspeare

Born 13 November 1827
Died 2 February 1886

Active: 1847 - 1886

Country of birth: England

Country of death: Italy

Sculptor, lecturer, author

Born in Manchester. He was the son of Hamilton Wood (born c.1805-11), a merchant and manufacturer. Shakespeare grew up amidst considerable financial uncertainty as his father's business interests waxed and waned. Hamilton Wood traded as Wood, Rowell and Co. in Manchester until 1836 when the partnership was dissolved. Wood senior then ran his own business in Manchester and Watling Street, London but was declared bankrupt on 30 June 1842. Further business ventures followed, this time in wood carving. Hamilton is associated with two partnerships in Covent Garden and Pimlico under the name of H. Wood and Co. (the first with James Edge Partington and William Nicholson and the second with J.B. Higgs which were dissolved respectively in 1844 and 1845). After this Hamilton became the sole proprietor of 'Hamilton Wood and Company, Patent Wood Carving Company', of Princes Street, Greenside Place, Edinburgh, and Hope Street, Leith Walk but this was also declared bankrupt (8 May 1848) and the estates associated with the business were sequestrated.

Against this backdrop, it is likely that Shakespeare acquired some wood carving skills as well as beginning to study sculpture. It is said he attended the Royal Academy Schools in the 1840s. Around 1851 he went to Rome, probably to study and ultimately settled there with his family comprising a son and four daughters who are recorded as having been baptized in Rome between 1861 and 1868.

From Rome, Wood exhibited five works at the Royal Academy of Arts between 1868-71. Among his known commissions are several commemorative or funerary works. These include the memorial to the Reverend Francis Blake Woodward (d.1866) in All Saints Church, Rome, in the form of a large marble cenotaph and Woodward's tomb in the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome. Both works include extensive mosaic work. There are also two restrained plaster medallions in All Saints' Anglican Church in Rome depicting the first Earl Cairns (1819-85) from Northern Ireland who is described as "the first lawyer of his time" and "an evangelical churchman of great piety" and another depicting the Reverend T.T. Carter (1808-1901), who was a noted Tractarian divine and Warden of Clewer from 1844. Shakespeare Wood lectured on the antiquities of Rome and wrote two (known) books: 'The Capitoline Museum of Sculpture. A Catalogue', published in Rome in 1872 and 'The New Curiosum Urbis: a guide to ancient and modern Rome' published by Thomas Cook & Co. Ltd, 1875. He died in Rome and is buried in the Non-Catholic Cemetery.

This record includes information about Wood's works in Rome submitted by Nicholas Stanley-Price. He located the information about Woodward's memorial and tomb, which comes from an unpublished document in the archives of the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome. It is a report dated July 13, 1923 and written by Leveson Scarth who addressed it to relatives of Woodward (to whom he also was related) who had raised the necessary funds to have the tomb in the Cemetery restored. In it Scarth refers to the church memorial as "a large marble cenotaph adorned with mosaics - designed by Mr Shakespeare Wood." From the context, it is clear that the tomb monument of very similar design was also by Wood though it is not explicitly stated. The plaster medallions in All Saints' Anglican Church are described at: www.allsaintsrome.org/TheGarden.html under The Vestry in the 'Walk round tour' (accessed 5 January 2013). There is a record for Wood's gravestone at http://www.acdan.it/protcem/work/pcGB.html#Stone921 (accessed 5 January 2013). Peter Hutchinson alerted the project to Shakespeare Wood's publications.

Citing this record

'Shakespeare Wood', Mapping the Practice and Profession of Sculpture in Britain and Ireland 1851-1951, University of Glasgow History of Art and HATII, online database 2011 [http://sculpture.gla.ac.uk/view/person.php?id=msib3_1215609764, accessed 30 Mar 2023]