If you drive into London from the west it is hard to miss the Hogarth roundabout with its distinctive narrow, one-way flyover. It gets its name from painter and engraver William Hogarth whose house is hard by. It tends to get overlooked because of the proximity of the more spectacular Chiswick House.
A roundabout is hardly a fitting public memorial for such a great man and in 2001 this statue by Jim Mathieson was placed on Chiswick High Road. It was unveiled by Ian Hislop and David Hockney, a satirist and an artist, something that Hogarth combined with such aplomb. At the last minute it was apparent something was missing and a bronze of his pug was added to the composition. Hogarth’s satire is, albeit unintentionally, still relevant 253 years after his death. He called his pug Trump.
Earlier on Sunday morning I walked through St Peter’s Square and saw another bronze for the first time. It is a Greek athlete by William Blake Richmond and commemorates him.
Richmond’s father was a close friend of William Blake, hence his first two names. Both Hogarth and Blake are buried at St Nicholas in Chiswick and it is on my list to visit next time I am walking in that direction.
Sir William Blake Richmond RA was my great grandfather and lived in Beavor Lodge, the site of which is somewhere under the Hammersmith flyover (there is a Beavor Lane there but I have never seen it).
His father, George Richmond RA, had been a member of a group of painters called the Ancients, the best known of whom was Samuel Palmer, who greatly admired and followed Blake. They spent an idyllic summer together at Shoreham in Kent and where some of Palmer’s greatest paintings were made.
George Richmond once walked from Hampstead to Soho with Blake and said it was like walking and talking to the Prophet Isaiah. He closed Blake’s eyes on his death bed.
I have two letters from Sir William Richmond written from ‘Beavor Lodge, Hammersmith’ and addressed to my great uncle Gerald Siordet. They are undated but would have been written around 1912 as they concern the decorations at Westminster Cathedral. Siordet had helped obtain the commission for the Stations of the Cross for Eric Gill, and was a member of the Westminster Catholic Dining Society where such matters were discussed. Sir William presented a paper ’Thoughts on the Decoration of Westminster Cathedral’ at their meeting in May 1912 reflecting on his experience from working on the mosaic decorations in St Paul’s Cathedral.
I will make sure Francis Plowden reads your most interesting comment. He is Sir William’s great-grandson and so a cousin of yours I suppose.