Statue of Queen Victoria, Sydney

Coordinates: 33°52′22″S 151°12′25″E / 33.872718°S 151.206851°E / -33.872718; 151.206851
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The statue in its present location

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 statue in its original location

Sculpture

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

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

Boer War.[1]

Location

Ireland

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
video icon "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.

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]

Australia

In the mid-1980s, the iconic

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

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]

The small sculpture of "Islay" disguising the ventilation shaft

A second statue nearby is of the Queen's favourite pet, a

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]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g Moore, Peter (2012). "Statue of Queen Victoria, Druitt Street". Dictionary of Sydney. Retrieved 24 July 2014.
  2. ^ a b c d e Fallon, Donal (7 July 2013). "Story of the statue in front of Sydney's Queen Victoria Building". Inside History. Retrieved 24 July 2014.
  3. ISBN 978-1405858434
    .
  4. ^ "World's Most Controversial Monuments (no.26)". Travel+Leisure. November 2011. Retrieved 28 July 2014.
  5. ^ "Queen Victoria Facts and Trivia". Queen Victoria Online. 2011. Retrieved 28 July 2014.
  6. ^ a b Fallon, Donal (24 May 2012). "Statues of Dublin: The unveiling (and removal) of Queen Victoria". Come here to me! Dublin life & culture. Retrieved 28 July 2014.
  7. ^ Catb (July 1977). "Royal Hospital, Kilmainham, Dublin". Flickr. Retrieved 29 July 2014.
  8. ^ a b c "QUEEN VICTORIA, QVB". Sydney Statues Project. 19 September 2010. Retrieved 29 July 2014.
  9. ISSN 0261-3077
    . Retrieved 17 January 2017.
  10. ^
    ISSN 0261-3077
    . Retrieved 4 January 2018.
  11. Independent.ie
    . Retrieved 27 July 2014.
  12. ^ "The talking dog at the QVB". Time Out – Sydney. 4 June 2013. Archived from the original on 27 July 2014. Retrieved 24 July 2014.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to the statue.

33°52′22″S 151°12′25″E / 33.872718°S 151.206851°E / -33.872718; 151.206851

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