A painted bronze sculpture of Sir Tim Berners-Lee carrying the leather rucksack in which he keeps his laptop has been unveiled at the National Portrait Gallery.
Apart from photographs, it is the first commissioned portrait of the inventor of the world wide web.
The two-thirds life-size statue was made by Sean Henry, who spent two days watching and photographing Berners-Lee in Boston. The computer scientist later had two further sittings at Henry’s studio in the UK.
Henry said: “Tim is a very dynamic person to sculpt as he has a very active mind and is active physically, too.
“Above all, what came through was his strong sense of purpose … it felt important to try to capture this in the work.”
The sculpture was commissioned by the gallery to celebrate Berners-Lee’s 60th birthday, was sponsored by JP Morgan and is the NPG’s first commissioned portrait sculpture for seven years.
Rosie Broadley, associate curator at the NPG, said Henry’s sculpted figures are usually anonymous, and in this one he had retained the idea of his subject being an “everyman”.
“The depiction of the sitter is resolutely contemporary, but the use of bronze has a timeless and permanent quality appropriate for a sitter with such a significant legacy,” said Broadley.
London-born Berners-Lee developed the web, starting from a proposal in 1989, and founded the World Wide Web Foundation in 2009, an organisation that seeks to establish access to the web as a basic human right.
Sir Tim Berners-Lee by Sean Henry is on display in Room 40 of the National Portrait Gallery from Friday.
