Isambard Kingdom Brunel

A memorial committee of the Institute of Civil Engineers commissioned the sculpture in 1860, some months after Brunel's death on 14 September 1859. While protracted discussions continued about an appropriate site to erect it and other statues, the bronze statue was completed in 1864 and kept in storage, and Marochetti died in 1867. The Institute of Civil Engineers had also commissioned Marochetti to make a similar statue of Brunel's rival engineer Robert Stephenson, who died a few weeks after Brunel on 12 October 1859, and then a third statue for the railway engineer Joseph Locke who died a year later, on 18 September 1860. The intention was to erect the three statues together in a…

The 2.45m bronze statue portrays Brunel standing casually, bareheaded, with his left leg slightly forward. The figure wears contemporary Victorian dress of frock coat, waistcoat, shirt, bow tie, and trousers, with a pair of dividers in his hands, but without the characteristic top hat or cigar in the widely recognised 1857 photograph. He gazes upstream under the arches of Waterloo Bridge towards Hungerford Bridge, although Brunel's Hungerford Bridge was removed in 1860 and the chains used to complete Clifton Suspension Bridge. The tall square Portland stone pedestal has flanking walls topped with scrolls incorporating benches below was commissioned from Shaw, and bears the inscription "/ /…