The seated Statue of Queen Victoria, currently in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, was made by John Hughes in 1908 and was originally located in Dublin. Made of bronze, it is situated on the corner of Druitt and George Street in front of the Queen Victoria Building. It was the last royal statue to have been erected in Ireland. [1]
A standing bronze statue of Queen Victoria is located nearby, on Queen's Square.
The Queen toured Ireland in April 1900, prompting the Royal Dublin Society to propose a national monument to her. Her death nine months later spurred a second burst of enthusiasm. [1] John Hughes, instructor in Modelling at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art, was commissioned to create the statue and moved his studio to Paris to cast the work. It was his most important commission to date. [1] Almost a decade later, it was unveiled in Dublin, Ireland, in the enclosed courtyard of Leinster House on 17 February 1908. At a ceremony with 1000 troops on parade, the Lord Lieutenant declared "we are assembled here to dedicate this noble work of art to the perpetual commemoration of a great personality and a great life." [2]
The statue shows an effort to portray Victoria Regina as the 'Irish Queen' rather than the 'British Sovereign'. She is seated in a low chair rather than an elaborate throne, allowing the artist to contain the figure within a sphere rather than as a towering pillar. (Other seated examples place her on a high throne.) And she wears a simple coronet rather than the royal or imperial crown...Moreover, the statue portrayed her as the Sovereign Head of the Most Illustrious Order of St Patrick, Ireland's order of chivalry dating from 1783. The star on her left breast, and the pendant badge, feature shamrocks, crowned harps, and St Patrick's Cross. The St Patrick reference probably backfired. It confirmed Ireland's colonial subordination. Round her neck the chain alternates the red and white roses of England. [1]
The statue sat atop a portland stone column, also designed by Hughes, with three sculptural groups to be placed below – "Fame", "Hibernia at Peace" and "Hibernia at War". [2] This last group was also known as "Erin and the Dying Soldier" and referred to the loyalty demonstrated by Irish soldiers in the Boer War. [1]
In 1922, 14 years after the statue's installation, Leinster House had become the seat of the Irish parliament, the Oireachtas, and nationalistic sentiment disapproved of having a British queen celebrated in such a location. The statue had by now been given the nickname "The auld bitch" by Irish writer James Joyce. [3] [4] [5] In August 1929 The Irish Times reported that discussions were under way to remove the statue “on the basis that its continued presence there is repugnant to national feeling, and that, from an artistic point of view, it disfigures the architectural beauty of the parliamentary buildings.” [2]
| External videos | |
|---|---|
 "Queen Turns Green At Royal Hospital" – report for Newsbeat by Cathal O’Shannon, RTÉ Television (13 January 1967). |
It was removed from its original location in July 1948 and replaced with a carpark. [1] It was transported by lorry to the Royal Hospital Kilmainham [6] [7] and, along with the associated three sculptural groups, was placed in a courtyard and left, developing a patina. The hospital had also been a proposed site for the parliament, and was used as a storage location for property belonging to the National Museum of Ireland. It is now the Irish Museum of Modern Art. Attempts to send the sculpture to London, Ontario did not succeed as neither the Canadian nor Irish governments wished to pay the cost of transport. [2] In February 1980 the statue was transferred to a yard behind a disused children's reformatory at Daingean, County Offaly.
The associated sculptures from the base of the statue are currently in the collection of Dublin Castle. [6]
In the mid-1980s, the iconic Queen Victoria Building in central Sydney was undergoing major renovations after decades of disuse, and appropriate public art was being sought for the entrance. Neil Glasser, Director of Promotions for the company undertaking the renovations (Singapore's Ipoh Gardens Ltd), travelled to several former British colonies in the hope of finding a statue. [8] After a "considerable amount of sleuthing", the statue, sitting in long grass behind the reformatory, was rediscovered and proposed to be moved to Australia. [2] In order to obtain approval, Glasser contacted John Teahan, the Director of the National Museum of Ireland, and Sydney's Lord Mayor contacted the Irish Ambassador in Canberra. In August 1986 Fine Gael Taoiseach, Garret FitzGerald, authorised that the statue be given to Australia "on loan until recalled". [1] Subsequently, declassified cabinet papers showed that the plan was opposed by the then finance minister John Bruton (later to be Taoiseach), as well as Teahan, on the basis that it represented the work of an Irish artist and "...representative of one of the many traditions of Irish history". [9]
The statue was transported by sea to Australia that year, restored in Sydney, and installed at its present location 43 years after it had last been on display. Despite heavy rain an unveiling ceremony took place on Sunday 20 December 1987 overseen by Eric Neal, Chief Commissioner of Sydney, and Dermot Brangan, first secretary at the Irish embassy to Australia. [8] [10] The irony of the British Queen being "transported" to Australia by ship was not lost on the Irish media. [11] In the days before the unveiling the embassy and the Daily Telegraph newspaper received anonymous threats of violence and protest about "the propriety of an Irish government giving a statue of Victoria as a gift." [10]
A second statue nearby is of the Queen's favourite pet, a Skye Terrier named "Islay", begging above a wishing well on behalf of the Royal Institute for Deaf and Blind Children. At a cost of $10,000, Sydney sculptor Justin Robson modelled the bronze work from an 1843 sketch by the Queen. The location of the statue is actually to disguise the ventilation shaft for the new carpark underneath the renovated building. The wishing well also includes "a poem telling the story of Islay which will be specially translated into Braille, four proverbs highlighting the morality of giving in six different languages, and a piece of stone from Blarney Castle, Ireland." [8] Since 1998, a recorded request for donations, supposedly being "spoken" by Islay, has been played at regular intervals from hidden loudspeakers. The recording says, "Because of the many good deeds I've done for deaf and blind children, I have been given the power of speech", and then expresses thanks for donations. It is voiced by local radio personality John Laws and concludes with two barks, also by Laws. [12]
Leinster House is the seat of the Oireachtas, the parliament of Ireland. Originally, it was the ducal palace of the Dukes of Leinster. Since 1922, it has been a complex of buildings of which the former ducal palace is the core, which house Oireachtas Éireann, its members and staff. The most recognisable part of the complex, and the "public face" of Leinster House continues to be the former ducal palace at the core of the complex.
The Royal Hospital Kilmainham in Kilmainham, Dublin, is a former 17th-century hospital at Kilmainham in Ireland. The structure now houses the Irish Museum of Modern Art.
Kilmainham is a south inner suburb of Dublin, Ireland, south of the River Liffey and west of the city centre. It is in the city's Dublin 8 postal district.
Events in the year 1911 in Ireland.
Victoria Square, also known as Tarntanyangga, is the central square of five public squares in the Adelaide city centre, South Australia.
HMS Hibernia was a 110-gun first-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy. She was launched at Plymouth dockyard on 17 November 1804, and was the only ship built to her draught, designed by Sir John Henslow.
The Sydney central business district (CBD) is the historical and main commercial centre of Sydney. The CBD is Sydney's city centre, or Sydney City, and the two terms are used interchangeably. Colloquially, the CBD or city centre is often referred to simply as "Town" or "the City". The Sydney city centre extends southwards for about 3 km (2 mi) from Sydney Cove, the point of first European settlement in which the Sydney region was initially established.
The Queen Victoria Gardens are Melbourne's memorial to Queen Victoria. Located on 4.8 hectares opposite the Victorian Arts Centre and National Gallery of Victoria, bounded by St Kilda Road, Alexandra Avenue and Linlithgow Avenue.
The Queen Victoria Building is a heritage-listed late-nineteenth-century building located at 429–481 George Street in the Sydney central business district, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Designed by the architect George McRae, the Romanesque Revival building was constructed between 1893 and 1898 and is 30 metres (98 ft) wide by 190 metres (620 ft) long. The domes were built by Ritchie Brothers, a steel and metal company that also built trains, trams and farm equipment. The building fills a city block bounded by George, Market, York, and Druitt Streets. Designed as a marketplace, it was used for a variety of other purposes, underwent remodelling, and suffered decay until its restoration and return to its original use in the late twentieth century. The property is co-owned by the City of Sydney and Link REIT, and was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 5 March 2010.
John Henry Foley, often referred to as J. H. Foley, was an Irish sculptor, working in London. He is best known for his statues of Daniel O'Connell in Dublin, and of Prince Albert for the Albert Memorial in London and for a number of works in India.
Sir Edgar Bertram Mackennal, usually known as Bertram Mackennal, was an Australian sculptor and medallist, most famous for designing the coinage and stamps bearing the likeness of George V. He signed his work "BM".
Gustavus Vaughan Brooke, commonly referred to as G. V. Brooke, was an Irish stage actor who enjoyed success in Ireland, England, and Australia.
Daniel Corkery was an Irish politician, writer and academic. He is known as the author of The Hidden Ireland, a 1924 study of the poetry of eighteenth-century Irish language poets in Munster.
The Irish National War Memorial Gardens is an Irish war memorial in Islandbridge, Dublin, dedicated "to the memory of the 49,400 Irish soldiers who gave their lives in the Great War, 1914–1918", out of a total of 206,000 Irishmen who served in the British forces alone during the war.
Events from the year 1847 in Ireland.
Rory O'More Bridge is a road bridge spanning the River Liffey in Dublin, Ireland and joining Watling Street to Ellis Street and the north quays.
Australia's monuments take on many distinct forms, including statues, fountains, natural landmarks and buildings. Whilst some monuments of Australia hold a national significance, many are constructed and maintained by local community groups, and are primarily significant on a local scale. Although Australia's monuments have many roles, including as tourist attractions, their primary purpose is to "safeguard, prolong or preserve social memory into the future". This social memory may relate to anything from colonisation to local industry to sports. The monuments of Australia reflect the nation's social and political history and by memorialising select moments, contribute to shaping how Australian history is told. Although a significant portion of Australia is desert, the population is highly urbanised and the cities contain some noteworthy monuments.
The centenary of the Easter Rising in Dublin, Ireland occurred in 2016. Many events were held throughout the country to mark the occasion.
