Sculptor, born in Prussia, the son of William Wilke whose ‘rank or profession’ is given as ‘Gentleman’ in his son’s marriage certificate of 1866. Nothing is known of Charles Wilke before 1857 in which year he was living at 18 Howland Street, Westminster, and contributed his first work to the Royal Academy, a bas-relief in marble entitled Innocence. From this year until 1876 he exhibited 15 sculptures at the Royal Academy, a mixture of imaginative subjects and portrait busts. Although he was granted British citizenship in 1875, he seems to disappear from the record after his final contributions to the Royal Academy in the following year. His marble group of 1875, Harold and Edith (‘Edith Finding the Body of Harold on the Battlefield of Hastings’), in West Marina Gardens, Hastings, East Sussex, was commissioned by Sir Thomas Brassey, then MP for Hastings, and intended for a site inside the new town hall. Delays to the construction of the town hall resulted in the sculpture being placed in storage until it could be sited within the Brassey Institute (opened 1880). When the Hastings Museum, which had been incorporated into the Institute in 1890, moved to John’s Place in 1928, the group went with it and at some later date, evidently for want of space, was set up outside the building, on the lawn; it was finally re-sited in West Marina Gardens in 1953. Long years out of doors, exposed to sea air, has resulted in the severe weathering of all surfaces and the loss of all fine detailing of Wilke’s only known public sculpture.
Ancestry: (i) 1861 Census … Middlesex. St Pancras. Kentish Town, (ii) London … Church of England Marriages and Banns … Tower Hamlets. St Mary, Bromley St Leonard … 1866, (iii) 1871 Census … London. St John The Evangelist. St John Westminster, (iv) UK, Naturalisation Certificates and Declarations, 1870–1916 for Charles Augustus William Wilke. Piece 005: Certificate Numbers A1297 – A1699 … 1875.
Bibliography: A. Graves, The Royal Academy of Arts. A complete dictionary of contributors and their work from its foundation in 1769 to 1904, (8 vols, 1905–06), Vol. VIII (Toft–Zwecker), 1906, pp. 266–67; Mapping Sculpture; J. Seddon et al, Public Sculpture of Sussex, Liverpool, 2014, pp. 96–97.
Terry Cavanagh, March 2025