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Kidwell, William
(b Weybridge, Surrey, 27 April 1662; d Dublin, 1736). English sculptor. He is described in his will as a ‘stonecutter’, but a number of signed church monuments reveal that he was a sculptor of considerable ability with a delicate touch ideally suited to carving in the naturalistic manner fashionable at the height of the Baroque. He was first apprenticed in 1678 as a joiner to John Bumpstead ( fl 1673–83), who had worked at St Stephen’s, Walbrook, London, and then to Edward Pierce (ii), perhaps the finest English sculptor of the 17th century. Kidwell established his own yard in Westminster, London, and from c. 1690 executed several worthy monuments, notably that to Sir Robert Bernard (c. 1690; Brampton, Cambs), with a fine portrait bust, and to Francis Coventry (1699; Mortlake, Surrey), composed of an inscription tablet flanked by a pair of atlantids, which seem to be influenced by Pierce. In 1711 Kidwell settled in Dublin; by 1712 he was supervising Sir John Perceval’s marble quarry at nearby Duncarney. From there he supplied chimney-pieces to various houses, including Kings Weston, Bristol, in 1713. Kidwell’s masterpiece, the monument to Sir Donat O’Brien (d 1717; Kilnasoolagh, Co. Clare; see IRELAND, fig. 13), has the deceased reclining on a mattress, surrounded by a rich architecture executed in black and white marble, and shows Kidwell’s debt to Grinling Gibbons and William Stanton. The monument to William Ponsonby, Viscount Duncannon (d 1724; Fiddown, Co. Kilkenny), is an early and remarkably pure example of an architectural wall tablet in the Palladian style, although that to Garret Wesley (d 1728; Laracor, Co. Meath) suggests that Kidwell remained faithful to Baroque conventions.
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