Lord Botetourt (statues)

Lord Botetourt is the name for a pair of statues on the campus of the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, depicting colonial Virginia governor Norborne Berkeley, 4th Baron Botetourt. The first of these statues was executed in 1772 by English sculptor Richard Hayward and became the first sculpture in the Colony of Virginia. It is the oldest surviving public statue in North America. A Baroque sculpture cut from marble, it was ordered by the Virginia General Assembly in 1771 and installed in 1773 in the loggia of the Capitol in Williamsburg. The statue's plinth was one of the earliest major neoclassical works in British America. After a period of vandalism and neglect following the removal of Virginia's capital to Richmond, the statue was purchased by the College of William & Mary in 1801 and transferred to the College Yard on its campus.
During the 19th century, the statue suffered further damage due to vandalism and was briefly stored in Eastern State Hospital during the American Civil War. After being returned to the Old College Yard, the statue remained there until 1958, when it was moved to storage due to the damage it had sustained. In 1966, it was installed in a display inside the college's Earl Gregg Swem Library. A bronze replica by college alumnus Gordon Kray was installed on the site as part of the college's tercentenary celebrations in 1993. The statues, sometimes referred to as Lord Bot, are associated with several traditions.
The statue depicts Virginia governor Norborne Berkeley, 4th Baron Botetourt, known as Lord Botetourt, standing in contemporary court dress. The original marble figure is slightly more than life-sized. The design follows a medallion depicting Lord Botetourt created by sculptor Isaac Gosset. The original sculptor Richard Hayward had previously created a statue of Pitt the Elder, which was also a standing figure but portrayed the subject dressed in a toga, a reflection of Pitt's status as an orator. Hayward's posing of Lord Botetourt is reminiscent of a c. 1737 depiction of Hans Sloane in the Chelsea Physic Garden by Michael Rysback. The right hand, now missing, held a rolled parchment.
The first statue's plinth was one of the earliest major pieces of Neoclassicism in British America. Its height is 5 feet (1.5 m). The classical ornamentation is presented in a Baroque fashion with a trim of shell, wave, and feather designs. This ornamentation is Adamesque; Hayward had previously worked with Robert Adam. Three sides feature inscriptions in all capital letters. The front is inscribed and depicts the Berkeley arms. Three sides, including the front that depicts the Berkeley arms, feature inscriptions. Facing the statue's front, the right side inscription addresses Lord Botetourt's "many public and Social Virtues which so eminently adorned his character".
The rear is a bas-relief of two women personifying Britannia and Virginia or America exchanging olive branches above the sacred flame of liberty on the altar of peace, which bears the word "Concordia". America is depicted as an Indian princess possesses a bow and a quiver of arrows but lacks a feathered headdress, anticipating a neoclassical model of this personification that would appear several decades later.
The original installation in the Capitol, located between the building's wings in its loggia, was surrounding by an iron railing that had been shipped from England with the statue. The 1772 statue has sustained substantial damage since the late 1780s due to vandalism – including by students of the college – and the elements. The nose was lost, the head has fallen off several times, and its right hand is missing. It has been on display in the Earl Gregg Swem Library since 1966.
American Founding Father Edmund Randolph described the statue as "not more admired for its exquisite workmanship than for being a memorial of a statesman more than great, because truly honest". Art historian Wayne Craven found the sculpture's styling as within the Baroque tradition, commenting on its similarities to Hyacinthe Rigaud's "grandiose" portraits of Louis XIV. He also held that the statue demonstrated "Baroque grandeur" prior to the period of "effeminate Rococo refinement". Architectural historian Marcus Whiffen – noting the substantial damage to Lord Botetourt's likeness and his missing right hand – positively appraised the original statue in 1958, comparing it to the portraiture of painter Joshua Reynolds. The formal stance is a mirror image of that of King's in a portrait that hung in the Governor's Palace.
Gordon Kray's 1993 cast bronze Lord Botetourt followed the design of Hayward's original. To replicate the original figure, casts were made. Due to damage on the original, particularly to the facial region and the missing hand, Kray said he utilized other portraits of Botetourt to "fill in the blanks"and reconstruct these elements in his Lord Botetourt. Bronze was chosen as the medium for the replica statue due to its greater resilience than marble, which Kray said might prevent further damage by students. From the base of the plinth to the top of the statue, it is 12 feet (3.7 m) tall.
Norborne Berkeley, 4th Baron Botetourt, was the penultimate colonial governor of the British Colony of Virginia. Lord Botetourt arrived in Williamsburg to begin his term as governor on October October 26, 1768, to a both optimistic and uncertain reception. His arrival coincided with a period of increased tension between the colonies and the British government. Botetourt proved amiable and, despite his pronounced loyalty to the Crown, was broadly popular even with aggrieved members of the House of Burgesses. In 1769, he became rector of the board of visitors of the College of William & Mary, where often joined students for Morning and Evening Prayers in the chapel of the College Building (now the Wren Building). Botetourt became noted for his patronage of the liberal arts and religion. At the college, he endowed the competitively awarded gold Botetourt Medals, of which future U.S. president James Madison would be a recipient. Despite dissolving the House of Burgesses over their protests to Townshend Acts in 1769, he was still well-respected in Williamsburg when he died of an illness on October 15, 1770.
An outpouring of public grief accompanied Botetourt's elaborate funeral procession, which began by translating his body from the Governor's Palace to a memorial service at Bruton Parish Church before continuing to the college's chapel, where he was entombed. On July 20, 1771, the Virginia General Assembly voted nemine contradicente (without dissent) to acquire "an elegant statue in marble" to commemorate Lord Botetourt. That such a memorial was approved was unusual, a fact noted by numerous letters to England and within the Virginia Gazette. Only once before had the Assembly had considered a public statue, with a 1766 proposal to erect a sculpture for George III having quietly failed.
The Assembly approved a budget of 700 guineas for the acquisition of the statue, a substantial amount of money for the period. The Assembly also approved the use of public funds with no set limit to pay towards the statue. The appropriation authorized a six-man commission to seek an artist from outside the colony to create the statue, with acting governor William Nelson at its head. Nelson appointed House of Burgesses member John Norton, a London merchant who was represented in Virginia by his son at Yorktown, as their agent in England.
The commission's intent was communicated to Botetourt's nephew and executor, Henry Somerset, 5th Duke of Beaufort. The Duke informed the commission that he would aid Norton and advised them that there were no recent depictions of Botetourt but that a wax medallion bearing his likeness did exist. The medallion was by Isaac Gosset, who was known for his prolific wax portraits of notable English persons. In March 1772, Norton shared a drawing by Richard Hayward with the Duke, who approved it as the design of the statue. Hayward, like other contemporary English sculptors, primarily relied on contracts for church monuments. Norton informed his son in Yorktown in a March 10 letter that he had sent the commission several drawings – including several options for the plinth's design – and four Gosset medallions of Botetourt. According to the letter, Hayward could complete the statue in a year and have the statue shipped to Virginia with iron rails for £700. Politician Robert Carter Nicholas wrote to Norton that the commission approved of the designs but opposed including the word "Peace" in the inscription; Carter did not specify the basis for this opposition.
Norton wrote to his son in August 1772 to report that the statue was "in forwardness" and that a marble block had been selected. He wrote another letter in March 1773 that the statue was completed and had attracted positive attention in England before being sent to the Americas aboard the ship Virginia. Before it was placed in the Capitol, the statue was admired by those in Williamsburg, though Nicholas lamented that "the likeness [was] not so striking as of the [m]edallion". The statue was accompanied by a mason named John Hirst – who received a similarly positive reception – erected the statue in the Capitol's piazza by early June 1773 for £50.
Hayward's Lord Botetourt was the first piece of sculpture in colonial Virginia. It was the second piece of pre-American Revolution to arrive in the southern colonies, after a replica of Wilton's Pitt arrived in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1770. Wilton's equestrian gilded lead George III and the original Pitt, both installed in New York City in 1770, were the first and second statues in the North American colonies. Of the four full-length statues erected in North America during the British colonial period, only Hayward's Lord Botetourt survives. It is the oldest surviving public statue in North America.
Through the late 18th century, Lord Botetourt became a regular subject of commentary in travelers' accounts. The traveling Scottish architect William Mylne observed the statue in 1775 and wrote in a letter that he was unfamiliar with statues done with subjects dressed in attire other than that of the ancient Greeks or Romans. He also noted that the plinth as enclosed by an iron railing. Despite the onset of the American Revolutionary War between the colonists and the British, the statue was cleaned every year at the opening of each General Assembly through 1779. In 1780, the capital of Virginia was moved from Williamsburg to Richmond. It was recorded as having remained in good condition through at least 1786.
Soon after the capital was moved, the Capitol building began to have elements removed by Patriot troops. By 1793, the General Assembly voted to dismantle the Capitol's east wing, though this was not completed immediately. The statue was vandalized and damaged by the weather. A 1796 watercolor and pen painting by Anglo-American artist Benjamin Henry Latrobe showed the statue and surrounding Capitol in a state of disrepair. Anglo-Irish writer Isaac Weld, writing about the statue in 1798, said that he believed the damage had occurred during the Revolutionary War in an act of anti-monarchial vandalism.
Lord Botetourt was purchased by a group College of William & Mary faculty in 1801 for $100. After the decapitated statue's head was struck with an iron plug by college president and bishop James Madison and a Mr. Moody, the repaired statue was erected on the college's campus in the Old College Yard in front of the College Building. It would remain there through the mid-20th century with one interruption.
The statue was there at the outset of the American Civil War, where it survived an 1863 skirmish on the campus but was moved to Eastern State Hospital in 1864 to preserve it from harm. It was displayed in front of the hospital until being returned to its spot in the Old College Yard in 1874. It was moved to storage in 1958 due to damage. It was placed on display in Swem Library in 1966. A bronze replica by college alumnus Gordon Kray was installed on the site of the original during the college's tercentenary celebrations in 1993. The 1772 statue remains on display in the library's basement. A campus tradition from between the 1920s and the 1970 maintained that freshmen had to salute the statue when passing it. The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation utilized three-dimensional scans from both Lord Botetourt statues and fragments from the original plinth in constructing a digital version of the now-lost Capitol building.
The statue and Lord Botetourt have both been held in high esteem by the college's students into the 21st century, possibly as a result of the statue's perpetuity or an inside joke. The statue is sometimes referred to as "Lord Bot" or "Lord B". Several ongoing traditions exist around the statue in the Old College Yard. include decorating the statue with wreaths during Yuletide and balloons for other festivities. The practice of rubbing one of the statue's feet has resulted oils from people's hands turning the foot shiny. A Twitter account speaking in the statue's voice also garnered popularity with students in the 2010s.