{{Short description|English silversmith and modeller (1789–1840)}} {{Infobox person | name = William Pitts II | image = | alt = | caption = | birth_name = | birth_date = 1790 | birth_place = | death_date = 1840 | death_place = | other_names = | occupation = Silver-chaser and sculptor | years_active = | known_for = | notable_works = }} '''William Pitts II''' (1790–1840) was an English silver-chaser and sculptor.

==Life== He was son of William Pitts I (c.1755 – after 1806), a silver-chaser to whom he was apprenticed in 1806, and his wife Mary Armitage.<ref name="ODNB">{{cite ODNB|id=75302|title=Pitts family|first=Anita|last=McConnell}}</ref> In 1812 he obtained the gold Isis medal from the Society of Arts for modelling. He was a draughtsman, and also tried painting; ambidextrous, he drew and modelled with either hand.<ref name="DNB">{{cite DNB|wstitle=Pitts, William|volume=455}}</ref>

Pitts gained a reputation for models and reliefs in neo-classical taste. A versatile artist, he made designs for plates and other domestic items. He also worked for Rundell & Bridge as a chaser. He ran into business and financial troubles, and committed suicide on 16 April 1840 by taking laudanum at his residence, 5 Watkins Terrace, Pimlico.<ref name="DNB"/><ref name="ODNB"/><ref>Register of Deaths entry for William Pitts, Saint George Hanover Square, Q2 1840, Volume 01, Page 1. [https://www.gro.gov.uk General Register Office, UK]</ref>

==Works== Pitts chased a portion of the "Wellington Shield" designed by Thomas Stothard for Green & Ward, and the whole of the "Shield of Achilles" designed by John Flaxman for Rundell & Bridge. In later life he modelled, in imitation of those, a "Shield of Æneas" and "Shield of Hercules" from Hesiod only a portion of the former was carried out in silver. Pitts had a very prolific imagination, and In 1830 he executed the bas-reliefs in the bow-room and drawing-rooms at Buckingham Palace. He exhibited models at the Royal Academy, and made two designs for the Nelson monument.<ref name="DNB"/>

He executed for publication a series of outline illustrations to the works of Virgil, of which two numbers were published, and also a series of illustrations to Ossian, of which two were engraved in mezzotint, but never published. He made similar drawings to illustrate Horace and the ''Bacchæ'' and ''Ion'' of Euripides.<ref name="DNB"/>

==Family== Pitts married at the age of nineteen, and left at least five children, of whom the third son Joseph Pitts II (baptised 1821, died 1880) was known as a sculptor. In 1846 Joseph executed a bust of George Stephenson that is in the National Portrait Gallery, London.<ref name="ODNB"/>

==Notes== {{reflist}}

'''Attribution'''<!--Please do not reformat, for the sake of those using screen-readers-->

{{DNB|wstitle=Pitts, William|volume=455}}

{{Authority control}} {{Use dmy dates|date=December 2016}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pitts, William, 02}} Category:1790 births Category:1840 deaths Category:English silversmiths Category:19th-century English sculptors Category:English male sculptors Category:English draughtsmen Category:Suicides by poison Category:1840s suicides Category:Suicides in Westminster Category:Artists who died by suicide Category:Drug-related suicides in England