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Watt is shown seated holding a pair of dividers, a scroll of paper on his lap. It surmounts a stone pedestal.

The statue of James Watt is the survivor of a pair of statues that were originally positioned at the approach to the main entrance of Manchester Royal Infirmary in Piccadilly. In planning the Esplanade in the early 1850s it had been intended to place statues along and in front of the wall that separated the Infirmary and the Esplanade. The first statue to be installed was of John Dalton, a bronze copy by William Theed of the marble statue carved by Chantrey. It was unveiled in 1855. Shortly afterwards the idea of a companion statue was made public, the subject of which was to be Watt. This was not the first time that Manchester had considered honouring Watt; a subscription list for a monument had been opened in 1836 and a committee appointed to contact Chantrey, but no statue was commissioned to honour the man without whose inventions Manchester would have remained a market town. The idea of a Watt statue was revived in 1855, and, as with the Dalton statue, it was the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society that was the driving force in organising the monument. The Watt Memorial Committee was established at a public meeting held in the town hall in December. It resolved that 'considering the immense influence of the discoveries of James Watt on the progress of society, and the beneficial application of them in this community, a statue ought to be erected in this city, in honour of his memory and services.' It was estimated that a statue would not cost in excess of £1,000. Watt may not have been a Manchester man (though his son James (1769-1848) had lived for a time in Manchester and was a member of the Literary and Philosophical Society) but it was made clear that Mancunians had a duty to honour the individual without whom the world's first industrial city would not have been created. Among the various speeches acknowledging Watt's originality as an inventor and engineer, J. C. Dyer disclosed that Manchester might go further than a simple monument, consideration could be given to the idea of establishing a Watt Institute to encourage the application of the mechanical sciences to industry. Financial support for the statue came from other local associations including the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, as well as from individual and businesses, some of whom had subscribed to the Dalton monument. As the statue was seen as a companion to the Dalton statue, the committee turned again to William Theed for a bronze copy of Chantrey's marble statue of Watt in Westminster Abbey. Theed accepted the commission though whether he employed one of Watt's sculpture-copying machines to assist him is unknown. The casting, as with Dalton, was carried out by Robinson and Cottam of Pimlico. The statue of Watt was unveiled by the Manchester engineer and art collector, William Fairbairn, in June 1857. (Fairbairn's own considerable achievements were to be recognised by a statue in Manchester Town Hall in 1878.) The cermony was a rather low-key event compared to previous unveilings, perhpas a consequence of the grip that the Art Treasures Exhibition had on the city. The new statue had been commissioned, made and installed with few problems, leaving a small surplus to divide between the Literary and Philosophical Society and the Royal Infirmary. But if not receiving the publicity directed at the Peel and Wellington monuments, this new addition to the public statuary in Piccadilly did not go unnoticed. The correspondent for the London- based Art Journal was unimpressed, rebuking a city with 'art pretensions' for not choosing to commission a new statue. Having already copied Chantrey's Dalton, the Watt statue suggested that Manchester was 'getting into the way of dealing in the old clothes of Art.' Whatever the justice of such criticism, the two bronze copies of Watt and Dalton were powerful symbols of the worlds of science and technology, at whose junction were released the forces which made Manchester the world's first industrial city.

James Watt, engineer and inventor, was born in Greenock in 1736, the son of a merchant. He trained as an instrument maker in Glasgow and then went to London where he established a business. In the 1760s he began investigating ways to improve existing steam engines. His improvements, including the separate condenser, were commercially exploited in his partnership with Matthew Boulton. Beginning in 1774 at the famous Soho works, Birmingham, Boulton and Watt began to manufacture the engines that made the use of steam power a practical reality for many industries. Other improvements to the steam engine were made in the following years. Watt was a versatile engineer and inventor whose interest was not confined to steam engines. The design of an effective sculpture-copying machine was one of the mechanical problems that occupied him for many years. By the time of his death in 1819 Watt was already recognised as one of the central figures of the industrial revolution, the man who, more than any other, had made possible the Age of Steam.

circa

raw year

Condition

At risk

Inscriptions

Signatures

statue

bronze

210 cm high approx

pedestal

sandstone

200 cm x 133 cm

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Dirty

Cracks, splits, breaks, holes

Damage to pedestal, chipped at corners

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Surface damage