Bronze head of Admiral Sir William Jock Whitworth, facing forwards. Only the upper part of his full-dress uniform upright collar is included at neck level, where the head sits on a rectangular grey marble base.
It is signed on the back of the neck 'C. W Sc. 44', and was exhibited at the Royal Academy in that year (1944).
This bust was commissioned by the War Artists Advisory Committee at the end of the sitter's term as Second Sea Lord (from 1941) and was transferred on permanent loan from the Imperial War Museum in November 1947.
Whitworth entered the Navy in 1899 from the RN College Dartmouth and spent World War I commanding destroyers. After the war he worked in naval intelligence and became a captain in 1925. He commanded a destroyer force in the Mediterranean 1928-31, but his inter-war shore appointments were above all connected with naval personnel, including reforms following the Invergordon mutiny. Unusually, he then commanded the flagships of both the Mediterranean and Home Fleets before becoming a rear-admiral in 1936 and serving as naval secretary to both Duff Cooper and Lord Stanhope (also first Chairman of the NMM Trustees) in their terms as First Lord of the Admiralty.
In June 1939 he was appointed to command the battle-cruise squadron and, in the 'Renown' as a vice-admiral from 1940, he played a leading part in the Norwegian campaign, including latterly in the battleship 'Warspite' at Narvik. He then flew his flag in the 'Hood' against German attempts to put surface raiders into the Atlantic but left her two weeks before she was sunk by 'Bismarck' to become Second Sea Lord and head of naval personnel. In this role he imperturbably managed its increase to over six times pre-war levels by 1944.
He became admiral late in 1943 and, from the following February, C-in-C at Rosyth, with involvements both in D-Day and the liberation of Norway. He retired in September 1946, forty-seven years to the day after entering the Navy.
Wheeler (1892-1974) developed a reputation as a 'traditional modernist' sculptor in the inter-war years and was elected RA in 1940. Both during and after the war he did a number of naval portraits and memorials, including Jellicoe's bust for Trafalgar Square. He was President of the Royal Academy for ten years from 1956.