Kidwell, William (1662–1736), sculptor, was born 27 April 1662 in Weybridge, Surrey, England, son of Robert Kidwell, a ‘gentleman’ from Walton-on-Thames, Surrey. William Kidwell started his apprenticeship as a ‘joiner’ with John Bumpstead (a stone-carver in the city of London and master of the Masons’ Company) on 26 March 1678. Prior to Kidwell's formal admission to the joiner's company (1687) he is known to have worked for Edward Pierce, one of the foremost sculptors working in London in the late seventeenth century. Kidwell is known to have executed a number of church monuments in England; including an exceptionally fine one to the memory of Francis Coventry (d. 1699) at Mortlake, Surrey. During the early years of Kidwell's career there was a great demand for stonemasons in London as a result of the post-fire rebuilding. By the early eighteenth century the market for ornamental stonework had shrunk. Kidwell, like other craftsmen, had to look further afield for patrons.
Kidwell moved to Ireland c.1710 and was made a freeman of the city of Dublin in Christmas 1711. He set up a stone yard at the ‘strand’ on the banks of the River Liffey close to the city of Dublin so that he could receive and dispatch heavy cargoes of stone. His reputation rests on the quality of his church monuments. But the lack of known surviving works by Kidwell (only sixteen signed monuments) would suggest that his twenty-five-year career in Ireland was based mainly on non-monumental works such as marble tables and chimneypieces. He obtained some of his marble from quarries in Co. Cork owned by Sir John Perceval. Kidwell was commissioned by Perceval to make chimneypieces from white Irish marble for his kinsman Edward Southwell at King's Weston, near Bristol. Perceval, who had close ties with Bristol, may have helped Kidwell establish an English market for his chimneypieces. Kidwell was described in his will as ‘of city of Dublin, stonecutter’, but he probably spent extended periods in England after c.1710 (a few of his monuments in Ireland are signed ‘of London’).
Kidwell was the finest sculptor working in Ireland during the early eighteenth century. He designed monuments for some of the most powerful figures in Ireland, including William Ponsonby (1657?–1724), 1st Viscount Dungannon, and possibly William Conolly (qv). His masterpiece is the monument (c.1717) to Sir Donat O'Brien at Kilnasoolagh, Co. Clare; it depicts the bewigged gentleman in a recumbent position with an elaborate canopy supported by columns. He also made smaller wall-plaque monuments without effigies (e.g. the Flower monument, Finglas, Co. Dublin), which are adorned in the baroque style with columns, cartouches, and putti.
William Kidwell married (14 September 1733) Letitia Moore, a widow. He died in Dublin in 1736 and his will was proved on 13 September 1737. He had at least two brothers, Thomas and Robert Kidwell, who were also mason-sculptors working in England c.1690–1740.