(fl. 1763 - 86), painter; won Premiums at the SA 1763 - 5; said to have studied under Zoffany; exh. SA 1777 - 80 from Jamaica.
1768 - 73 Rome
'Mr Weakstead Scolar to Zoffany' arrived in Rome in 1768.1 In December 1769 Father Thorpe told Lord Arundell that Wickstead was a suitable artist for copying a small version of van Dyck's Family of Charles I in SS.Apostoli. The copy was duly begun in July 1770; it was mentioned again in June 1771, and was dispatched to Wardour Castle in August 1772 (the same picture was apparently also copied for Lord Arundell by Anne Forbes).2 In 1772 James Byres sent to William Constable Wickstead's portrait of the Roman dwarf Baiocho (Burton Constable) and Byres's inventory of 1790 lists A Girl reading by Wickstead.3
Though few of Wickstead's works are now known, Thomas Banks wrote from Rome on 31 July 1773 that 'little Wickstead has had most of the portraits to paint last season, owing to the endeavours of Messrs. Norton and Byres to carry every gentleman they could get hold of to see him', but the arrival of Hugh Barron had 'proved no small mortification'.4 This close association between Wickstead and Byres, and Wickstead's reputation for 'small whole-length portraits', suggests that Wickstead may have painted two Roman conversation-pieces featuring Byres with a number of English tourists dateable 1773 (Springhill, Ulster, and Audley End; Ham House and priv. coll.).5 At some stage Wickstead had met William Beckford of Somerley (who had been in Rome and was to take him, with the painter George Robertson, to Jamaica,6 probably in 1773 - 4).
1. Hayward List, 13, 35. 2. Thorpe letters MSS (9*, 26 Dec. 1769*; 19 May, 14 Jul. 1770; 29 Jun. 1771). Thorpe list MSS. 3. Byres MSS. 4. Bell, Banks, 16. 5. See Nollekens, 2:190. R.B. Ford, Apollo, 99[1974]:450 - 4. 6. Edwards, 144, 177 - 8.