Achilles (The Wellington Monument). Sir Richard Westmacott (1775-1856), 1822. Bronze. Eighteen feet (or 5.5 m.) high in itself, and thirty feet (over 9m.) high from its base, this colossal statue stands in the south-east corner of Hyde Park close to the Duke of Wellington's Apsley House, which overlooks Hyde Park corner itself. The bronze came from twelve French canon captured at Waterloo and elsewhere, and the funds, £10,000 by Benedict Read's reckoning (56) were collected as a tribute to Wellington from the women of England. [Click on all the images to enlarge them.]
Arthur Byron explains that the figure was actually modelled on "one of the two horse-tamers [the role adopted by Castor and Pollux] on the Monte Cavallo in Rome, which were originally brought from Alexandria, possibly by Constantine" — the shield and sword being added "for effect"; it is certainly an impressive monument, according to Byron "the largest sculpture cast in bronze for 1800 years" (298).
It was understandable that this, the first of the many national memorials to Wellington, should have been symbolic: after all, he was still alive at the time. Besides, it aligned him with a timeless hero of classical times. Dynamic as it is, the statue met with both outrage and ridicule, for predictable reasons. After all, the huge and practically nude male figure appeared at a time fast approaching the Victorian period. A strategically placed fig leaf has twice been sabotaged, and had to be restored. Still, it is probably the sculptor's best known and most admired work, and nowadays Bob Speel is not alone in seeing it "with its strongly defined musculature," as "an outstanding example of the nude male figure." Claire Bullus and Ronald Asprey point out that three more statues of Wellington were erected in London in his lifetime, and a further one after his death, and that he is "the only person to have two equestrian statues in the capital" (102).
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Photographs and text, 2006 and 2026 respectively, by Jacqueline Banerjee/ [You may use these images without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the photographer and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]
Bibliography
Bullus, Claire, and Ronald Asprey. Statues of London. With Photographs by Dennis Gilbert. London & New York, Merrell, 2009. [Review]
Byron, Arthur. London Staues: A guide to London's Outdoor Statues and Sculpture. London: Constable, 1981.
Read, Ben. Victorian Sculpture. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1982.
Speel, Bob. "The Wellington Memorial (Achilles), at Hyde Park Corner, London, by Sir Richard Westmacott RA." http://www.speel.me.uk/sculptlondon/hydeparkachilles.htm
Created 21 August 2006
Last modified 30 January 2026