‘A token of their love’: Queen Victoria Memorials in New Zealand

Abstract

This article provides an overview of the four metropolitan sculptural memorials to Queen Victoria in late-colonial New Zealand, which all immediately precede the colony’s Dominion status (1907). In chronological order, they were erected in Auckland, Christchurch, Wellington, and Dunedin. While the Auckland memorial was unveiled within the Queen’s lifetime, her death in 1901 catalysed the commission of more ambitious counterparts in Wellington and Dunedin, and a degree of intercity rivalry was consciously articulated in advocacy for them. The memorials reflect a Pākeha (European) New Zealand sense of identity as a loyal, pro-monarchical, and imperial colony, but also as a ‘Better Britain’, with a proud sense of prosperity and achievement. Local content features prominently in two of them, notably the signing with Māori of the Treaty of Waitangi (1840) in one of the reliefs for the capital city memorial (Wellington), and an ambitious celebration of fifty years of provincial achievement in the pedestal sculpture for the Christchurch counterpart. Due to a dearth of home-grown talent, together with the belief in the artistic superiority of Britain (often known at the time as ‘Home’), British sculptors were invariably commissioned for these memorials. Cost-effectiveness, prestige, and the ability to render a realistic likeness were all criteria behind the choice of artists, with Francis John Williamson commissioned for two of them (Auckland and Christchurch). In researching this article, extensive use has been made of primary newspaper sources to document the political context of the memorials. In all of them, particularly that of Christchurch, New Zealand’s loyalty to Britain in the South African War (1899–1902) was a leading issue. Artistic and aesthetic issues and analysis were less prominent, although there was a widespread belief that the Queen should be honoured for purely symbolic and not utilitarian causes. While emphasis is given here to the early history of the memorials, from commissioning to unveiling, their afterlife is summarized, and an attempt is made to answer Miles Fairburn’s plea for ‘the minds of the people’ that created the built heritage of New Zealand to be accorded greater historical attention.

Full text

‘A token of their love’: Queen Victoria Memorials in New Zealand
Mark Stocker
New Zealand makes a particularly apposite case study as the sole colonial
focus in this issue of 19, although this writer must declare a certain bias.
As not just part of the British world but in its self-image a ‘Better Britain’,1
late-colonial New Zealand honoured its rst head of state in the form of
the Queen Victoria public memorials erected in its four major metropoli-
tan centres: Auckland, Christchurch, Dunedin, and Wellington. With
New Zealand’s population of 815,862 in the 1901 census, Victoria was thus
over twice as visible to her subjects as she was in the United Kingdom,
indeed enjoying a more prominent prole than anywhere else in the British
Empire apart from the Bahamas, Malta, and Mauritius, which were all far
smaller colonies.2 Her memorials were erected, as the quotation in the title
of this article suggests, as tokens of colonial love and loyalty. To some visi-
tors, such a relationship appeared comically enduring. In 1978 Bob Hope
quipped: ‘New Zealand is the only country where “God Save the Queen”
is a love song.’3 Yet any study of the memorials reveals that a keen sense of
local politics coexisted, often symbiotically, with the global, in a kind of
imperial ‘cementing’ evident in their iconographic content, as well as what
was said at the time of their erection. With the fascinating exception of
the Queen Victoria at Ohinemutu, near Rotorua, colonial eyes were set on
British sculptors as the sole providers of worthy memorials to her. Such an
outlook would continue for another generation.4
1 James Belich summarizes this late nineteenth-century phenomenon as ‘a strong
New Zealand collective identity as Better Britons; a patriotic and martial British
“imperialism”; and an assumption of the full compatibility between the two’. See
James Belich, Paradise Reforged: A History of the New Zealanders from the 1880s to the
Year 2000 (Auckland: Allen Lane, 2001), p. 116.
2 Jennifer Powell, ‘e Dissemination of Commemorative Statues of Queen
Victoria’, in Modern British Sculpture, ed. by Penelope Curtis and Keith Wilson
(London: Royal Academy of Arts, 2011), pp. 282–88 (pp. 285–87).
3 Heinemann Dictionary of New Zealand Quotations, ed. by Harry Orsman and Jan
Moore (Auckland: Heinemann, 1988), p. 349.
4 is was demonstrated when, in 1918, a local politician, W. H. Montgomery, advised
his father-in-law, the Minister of Defence, Sir James Allen, that ‘no narrow paro-
chial feeling should induce the government to employ local artists’ for memorials
to the Great War. See Jock Phillips, ‘e Quiet Western Front: e First World War
and New Zealand’, in Race, Empire and First World War Writing, ed. by Santanu Das
( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 231–48 (p. 237).

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Victoria before ‘statuemania’
e earliest representation of Queen Victoria in New Zealand public
sculpture had relatively humble beginnings and a recent, tragic end.
In a matter of seconds, the earthquake of 22 February 2011 destroyed
William Brassington’s corbels in the stone chamber of the Canterbury
Provincial Government Buildings, Christchurch (1864–65). Spirited, if
slightly naive, these carvings formed an integral part of rst generation
colonial architect Benjamin Mountfort’s splendid Gothic Revival deco-
rative ensemble. Besides Victoria, other corbels took the form of recog-
nizable portrait heads of Prince Albert and Florence Nightingale.5 e
German migrant and die-sinker Anton Teutenberg contemporaneously
carved slightly more sophisticated matching corbels of Victoria and
Albert for the entrance arch to the Supreme Court (now High Court)
building in Auckland (1866), which still survive in situ (Dunn, pp. 13–15).
An altogether more ambitious and remarkable instance of memorializing
hybridity is the half-length, over life-sized painted wooden carving of
Victoria at Ohinemutu, near Rotorua (Fig. 1).6 It was presented in 1875
to the Māori Arawa tribal confederation to honour its role as imperial
and colonial kūpapa (allies) during the still recent New Zealand Wars.
Crafted by an anonymous Italian, it was admired both for ‘the happy
air of dignity in the countenance, together with that peculiar look of
matronly love which distinguishes Her Majesty’.7 In 1900 Patu itiki
of Horohoro carved the pedestal, while the celebrated Tene Waitere
constructed the accompanying canopy. Both exemplify the local Ngāti
Tarawhai tradition that dominated Māori carving in the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries.8
e carving at Ohinemutu is an altogether dierent animal from
Victoria’s later metropolitan manifestations discussed below, and is no
less interesting for it. e commission came not long after the rst royal
tour to New Zealand, undertaken by her second son, Prince Alfred, Duke
of Edinburgh (1869–70). His warm interactions with Te Arawa — who
admired the Duke’s hunting and canoeing prowess as well as his kilt,
which they likened to their ax piupiu — were recalled in a section of the
5 Michael Dunn, New Zealand Sculpture: A History (Auckland: Auckland University
Press, 2008), pp. 12–13.
6 For a case study, see Mark Stocker, ‘An Imperial Icon Indigenised: e Queen
Victoria Memorial at Ohinemutu’, in New Zealand’s Empire, ed. by Katie Pickles and
Catharine Coleborne (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015), pp. 28–50.
7 ‘Present of a Wooden Bust of Her Majesty to the Natives’, Taranaki Herald, 7 July
1875, p. 2.
8 Roger Neich, Carved Histories: Rotorua Ngati Tarawhai Carving (Auckland:
Auckland University Press, 2001), pp. 64–69.

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ocial handbook of the 1901 royal tour.9 irty years later, however, Māori
had become increasingly marginalized from royal ritual. Culturally, they
were at a low ebb on the home front, while overseas their leaders’ requests
for audiences at Court were declined.10 e demographic nadir of Māori
occurred around 1900, when they amounted to little over 5 per cent of the
population, at precisely the time that New Zealand was repeatedly touted
as being ‘98.5 per cent British’ (Belich, p. 189).
Similar percentages might perhaps be accorded to Pākehā
(New Zealand European) monopolization and Māori disempowerment
in relation to the memorials in Auckland, Christchurch, Wellington,
and Dunedin, discussed below. e late nineteenth century was marked
by several jubilees that witnessed the upsurge of the elderly Queen’s
popularity, starting with the Golden Jubilee (1887), which Victoria
herself called ‘this brilliant year’. Another ftieth anniversary in 1890
commemorated the signing of New Zealand’s founding constitutional
9 R. A. Loughnan, Royalty in New Zealand: e Visit of eir Royal Highnesses e Duke
and Duchess of Cornwall and York to New Zealand (Wellington: Government Printer,
1902), pp. 389–90.
10 Claudia Orange, e Treaty of Waitangi (Wellington: Bridget Williams Books,
2011), pp. 192–202.
Fig. 1: Anonymous carver, Queen Victoria, 1873. Originally Tama-te-kapua,
Ohinemutu, Rotorua. Relocated to Te Papaiouro Marae, Ohinemutu, 1900.
Pedestal by Patu itiki, canopy by Tene Waitere. J. K. and H. D. Fuller
Collection, Rotorua Public Library.

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document, the Treaty of Waitangi. Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee (1897)
prompted an empire-wide epidemic of ‘statuemania’.11 And then in 1900,
Canterbury, probably New Zealand’s most parochially proud province,
celebrated the Golden Jubilee of its settlers’ arrival at Lyttelton, the port
of Christchurch. Miles Taylor believes these represented ‘probably the
rst occasions on which Pākehā really began to demonstrate their own
version of patriotism and loyalty to Queen Victoria in a substantial way’.12
Strident articulation of such sentiments certainly accompanied the
earliest metropolitan memorial, and the only one unveiled in Victoria’s
lifetime, in Albert Park, Auckland.
‘The People’s Statue’: Queen Victoria at Albert Park, Auckland
On 23 September 1896, Victoria had ruled for longer than any other
English sovereign, hence an early headline about the Auckland memo-
rial: ‘e Record Reign: How It Should Be Celebrated.’13 A public meeting
held in May 1897, a month before the Diamond Jubilee, considered such
propositions as a Victoria Hospital for Children, a convalescent home, and
an Institute for the Blind. Initially, the hospital won favour, but this was
opposed by the New Zealand Herald which demanded ‘a statue on the site
of the agsta in the Albert Park. at would be a permanent and vis-
ible memorial of a memorable reign.’14 Much was made of the fact that the
monument would be the rst in the colony at a time when the four centres
were still evenly sized and Dunedin was only just beginning to yield to
Auckland in commercial and demographic signicance.15 A Herald leader
struck an oft-repeated note on the didactic value of a memorial. It would
‘tell to our children’s children and their posterity after them, how their
fathers loved the best and greatest monarch that ever sat on the British
throne’.16 e Herald then polled its readers, the rst time — so it claimed —
that such an exercise had been undertaken in New Zealand, and can-
nily headed the listed options with ‘Statues of the Queen’. Although the
response (slightly under 2000 replies) was considered disappointing, the
11 For a succinct discussion, see H. W. Janson, Nineteenth-Century Sculpture (London:
ames and Hudson, 1985), pp. 176–77.
12 Miles Taylor, ‘Queen Victoria and New Zealand’, Margaret Avery Memorial Lec-
ture, University of Waikato, 20 September 2006, unpaginated. I am grateful to
Miles Taylor for making the script of his lecture available.
13 New Zealand Herald, 5 May 1897, p. 5.
14 ‘A Statue of the Queen’, New Zealand Herald, 12 May 1897, p. 4.
15 In the 1901 census, the population of Auckland was 67,226, Christchurch 57,041,
Dunedin 52,930, and Wellington 49,344. See New Zealand Ocial Year Book 1901
(Wellington: Government Printer, 1902), p. 366.
16 Leader, New Zealand Herald, 1 June 1897, p. 4.

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statue won handsomely and a further public meeting endorsed the poll.
Contribution boxes for what became known as ‘e People’s Statue’ were
placed in central city locations on Jubilee Day, 22 June 1897, and within
two days £150 17s. 9d. had been raised.17
Auckland’s self-image as a leading metropolis of ‘Better Britain’ was
reected in the Herald’s rejection of philanthropic options. e newspa-
per contrasted ‘the intense distress and painful poverty which unhappily
exist in the United Kingdom [. . .] which no one will presume to say we
have anything approaching a parallel in this [. . .] new land’.18 is mate-
rial complacency was, however, accompanied by cultural deference in the
assumption that
a high class work of art by a well-known English sculptor,
erected upon a conspicuous site, would [. . .] not only serve
as a permanent record [. . .] but would help to encourage in
the community a love of art and a desire to beautify and adorn
our city.19
Auckland was not alone in this mindset; throughout the empire remarkably
few native-born or -based sculptors received commissions (Powell, p. 287).
Designs for the memorial came from Henry Armstead, Alfred
Gilbert, the Wellington-based William Leslie Morison, Hamo ornycroft,
and Francis John Williamson.20 By February 1898, the choice had narrowed
to Williamson and ornycroft. e latter’s design was regretfully rejected
by the memorial committee which recognized its ‘great intrinsic merits’ but
could not aord it.21 Despite ornycroft’s greater artistic status, there were
cogent reasons besides aordability for preferring Williamson. Even before
the decision was made, the committee cabled him to send a photograph of
his 1887 Queen Victoria, commissioned by the Royal College of Surgeons,
London. is statue, as Williamson repeatedly told prospective patrons,
was the one that ‘the Prince of Wales has publicly said he considers the
best portrait ever executed of his mother’.22 e sales pitch worked: no
fewer than nine replicas or close variants were respectively commissioned
for Londonderry (1898), Auckland, King Williamstown, South Africa
(1899), Paisley (1901), Hastings (1902), Christchurch (1903), Perth, Western
Australia (1903), Wakeeld (1905), and Rangoon (1908).
17 ‘Queen’s Statue’, New Zealand Herald, 22 June 1897, p. 8.
18 Leader, New Zealand Herald, 1 June 1897, p. 4.
19 ‘e Queen’s Statue’, New Zealand Herald, 23 May 1899, p. 5.
20 Michael Dunn writes of Morison: ‘In fact, his relegation to obscurity is as
complete as a century of neglect can make it’ (p. 31).
21 ‘e Queen’s Statue’, New Zealand Herald, 15 February 1898, p. 5.
22 Francis John Williamson, letter to Churchill Julius, 25 July 1898, Christchurch
Cathedral, Archive 63.

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Commissions from the Royal Family resulted in Williamson styling
himself ‘the Queen’s Sculptor’ and later ‘Her Late Majesty’s Private
Sculptor’. Victoria genuinely believed that ‘Mr Williamson has a great deal
of talent as we know by his Busts of the Pces and Pcesses’.23 e critic
M. H. Spielmann was harsher:
It is doubtless owing to Mr Williamson’s legitimate desire to
give pleasure to his Royal patron that he carried so far his skill
in working out texture of draperies and the details of embroi-
deries and lace and slurred over the hard facts of a face.
Yet Spielmann conceded that ‘he has well understood a certain side of what
is liked in semi-ocial work’.24 Williamson’s portrait closely resembles the
Queen’s ocial Golden Jubilee photograph by Alexander Bassano, even
to the extent of reproducing the fan and handkerchief. For the original
statue, she had accorded Williamson seven sittings and lent him, as he later
recalled, ‘the crown, robes, all jewels and orders as she was anxious that
my work should be exact in every particular’.25 Such exactitude ultimately
mattered more to an Auckland audience than Spielmann’s sensibilities. At
the public meeting that had endorsed the statue, an unnamed speaker was
applauded for his assertion that ‘true art was that which most closely cop-
ied nature; if a faithful and true likeness of Her Majesty were erected, then
it would be a work of art’.26
Williamson was commissioned in February 1898, and his statue
reached Auckland in January 1899 (Fig. 2). ‘A brilliant assemblage’ witnessed
the unveiling on 24 May, the Queen’s eightieth birthday. e Auckland
Weekly News reminded readers that this was ‘the rst statue of Her Majesty
erected in the colony of New Zealand. It is tting that the statue should be
reared in Albert Park.’ is had been the location of the Albert Barracks,
constructed in the late 1840s, which subsequently housed imperial troops
during the New Zealand Wars. us ‘from where the statue now stands
military roads, military outposts and war vessels could be seen, all there
in the name of Queen Victoria’.27 James Belich claims that New Zealand
‘suddenly became more warlike’ in the 1890s and witnessed a near tripling
in military volunteers between 1897 and 1902 (p. 79). e South African
23 Mark Stocker, ‘Francis John Williamson (1833–1920): e New Zealand Sculp-
tures’, Art New Zealand, 61 (1991 –92), 73–79, 85 (pp. 73, 74).
24 M. H. Spielmann, British Sculpture and Sculptors of To-day (London: Cassell, 1901),
p. 19.
25 Quoted in Elisabeth Darby, ‘Statues of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert: A
Study in Commemorative and Portrait Statuary 1837–1924’ (unpublished doctoral
thesis, University of London, 1983), p. 320.
26 ‘Auckland and the Record Reign’, New Zealand Herald, 15 June 1897, p. 5.
27 ‘e Queen’s Statue’, Auckland Weekly News, 2 June 1899, supplement, p. 1.

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Fig. 2: Francis John Williamson, Queen Victoria, 1898–99. Albert Park, Auckland.
e Author.

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War, which broke out ve months after the unveiling, enjoyed enthusiastic
national support, and is signicant to the political context of subsequent
memorials, especially that of Christchurch.
A tone of imperial patriotism, together with local civic triumphal-
ism, resounded in the Auckland Weekly News: ‘Certainly there are no people
in the whole of Australasia who have done so much for this part of Queen
Victoria’s new empire as Aucklanders.’ Readers were also reminded that
the foundations of Auckland province were cemented with the
blood of Maoris slain in battle, and to-day the foundation on
which Auckland’s statue of the Queen rests, is of stone cut and
quarried at the instance of the Maoris in peace and amity, as a
token of their love for the great Empress.28
As if to conrm this, a body of Waikato Māori — erstwhile foes in the New
Zealand Wars — lined the railings that guarded the statue, augmenting
the ‘stalwart’ assembled artillerymen. Māori oratory played no part in the
formal ceremony, however, in which the Governor, the Earl of Ranfurly,
delivered a ‘vigorous and manly speech, such as went to the hearts of the
sturdy Britains [sic] of the South’. Upon the unveiling, the crowd let forth
‘three lusty British cheers for the Queen’, while war vessels in Freemans Bay
thundered a royal salute.29
In retrospect, Williamson’s statue seems a modest one for such pano-
ply. It was only the sixth public sculpture of its kind erected nationally
and the rst in Auckland. e memorial committee found that donations
did not necessarily ow as freely as monarchical sentiments, a problem
also encountered by later counterparts in Christchurch, Wellington, and
Dunedin. Auckland perhaps suered for having been rst o the produc-
tion line, encouraging her younger sisters to be more glorious and victo-
rious Victorias. If the statue disappoints, this is not because it lacks the
intricacy, inventiveness, or drama of a New Sculpture counterpart such as
Alfred Gilbert’s famous Victoria Memorial at Winchester Castle (1885–1912).
Such qualities could hardly be expected from his senior and more con-
servative contemporary Williamson. Rather, it is too short for an outdoor
public monument, the bronze measuring 180 cm and the memorial in its
entirety some 450 cm from its Māori-hewn foundations to the lightweight
crown favoured by the unostentatious Queen. Christchurch learned from
Auckland’s example and within two years of the unveiling, Williamson was
engaged on a new, taller version. e Press thus reported that ‘with a gure
18in. higher, and a pedestal higher in proportion, the [Christchurch] statue
should be a very imposing one’.30
28 Ibid., p. 1.
29 Ibid., p. 2.
30 ‘e Jubilee Memorial Statue’, Press, 29 November 1900, p. 2.

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Queen Victoria in Christchurch: ‘a slice of England, cut from top to boom’
Christchurch’s ‘imposing’ statue was rst mooted in the context of the
Canterbury provincial jubilee of 1900. Like Auckland, this was no foregone
conclusion. In a series of meetings in July and August 1900, the General
Committee of the Jubilee Commemoration considered the most suitable
and enduring means of celebration. In late July, readers of the Press were
invited to suggest ideas and a lively debate ensued. From an initial twelve
options, the list grew daily to reach a bewildering 113. Besides a ‘full-sized
statue of the Queen’, ones of Lord Roberts and William Baden-Powell
were proposed, reecting the impact of the South African War.31 From the
1294 votes cast, the most popular option was completion of Christchurch
Cathedral, a celebration — or to its critics an indictment — of the Anglican
ideals behind the settlement’s foundation. Second also came the comple-
tion of the cathedral, but with the north transept wall reserved ‘for those
who have fallen, or who may in the future fall, ghting for the Empire’.
ird came the Mayor William Reece’s own suggestion of ‘a group or
obelisk in the city commemorative of “e Queen”, “e Pioneers”, “e
Industries” and, if thought desirable, the sending forth of our young men
to South Africa’. Fourth was a ‘full-sized statue of the Queen’.32
Several correspondents protested at the proposal to complete the
cathedral. A Press editorial, appealing for the obliteration of ‘all elements
of sectarian dierence’, failed to calm feelings.33 At a memorial committee
meeting in August, Reece deftly reversed the rankings and his proposal was
carried by a large majority. Reece had recently contacted David Goldie,
Mayor of Auckland, and had also heard that
a very ne statue of the Queen in sitting posture had been
done by Mr Williamson [. . .]. A replica in bronze of this might
be obtained at a fairly moderate cost [. . .]. He hoped to see
the whole matter placed in the hands of some well-known and
distinguished artist at Home, so that the statue might be one
of which they could be proud, and also act as an object lesson
to their rising artists.34
Henry Wigram, chairman of the committee, advocated a memorial that
would link the Canterbury pioneers
31 ‘Canterbury Jubilee Memorial’, Press, 30 July 1900, p. 3.
32 ‘Jubilee Memorial Suggestions’, Press, 4 August 1900, p. 7.
33 Leader, ‘e Jubilee Memorial’, Press, 10 August 1900, p. 4.
34 ‘e Jubilee Celebrations’, Press, 21 August 1900, p. 2. Williamson went on to ex-
ecute seated statues of Queen Victoria in Croydon (unveiled 1903) and Farrukhabad
(unveiled 1905). Further Indian casts after the latter model were erected in Muttra,
Etah, and Bulundshahr. See Mary Ann Steggles and Richard Barnes, British Sculpture
in India: New Views and Old Memories (Kirstead: Frontier Publishing, 2011), p. 266.

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with those of her sons who have fallen in South Africa — the
beginning of our Jubilee period with the end — both under the
shadow of that sovereign who has preserved the devoted love
and loyalty of her Empire throughout our provincial history.35
Canterbury School of Art teacher Charles Kidson provided a set of draw-
ings with ‘a view to giving the people of Canterbury and the artist in
London’ an idea of what the memorial might look like.36 Yet in response
to the Auckland-based sculptor Allen Hutchinson ‘pointing out that it was
unfair not to give artists in the colony a chance to compete for the designs’,
Reece granted a month’s extension to make this possible.37
In the event, no such entries were received. e committee had
already been in correspondence with Williamson, who advised that a
memorial as suggested would cost 1800 guineas, some £600 more than the
simpler Auckland precedent. He recommended a standing gure of the
Queen, which would be £175 cheaper than the proposed seated version. On
11 January 1901 the Jubilee Memorial Committee endorsed this and placed
its order for the statue, together with a granite pedestal.38 Accompanying
bas-reliefs would be commissioned when sucient funds permitted. Twelve
days later Queen Victoria was dead, and the recommendation was hurriedly
ratied. Wigram stressed urgency, rightly anticipating that ‘a large number
of statues of the Queen would be likely to be ordered’.39
e ‘Jubilee Memorial’ was now renamed ‘e Queen’s Statue’ by
the Press, which intoned:
From every part of the Empire comes news of movements [. . .]
to erect statues of the Queen. Christchurch, the capital of this
‘slice of England cut from top to bottom’ will not be laggard in
this work of love and loyalty. e claims of the Jubilee memo-
rial on Canterbury men and women were strong and insistent;
the claims of the Victoria memorial are imperative.40
e newspaper tempered reverence with pragmatism in opposing sug-
gestions that omas Woolner’s statue (1863–65) of John Robert Godley,
founder of the Canterbury province, should be moved from its prime loca-
tion facing the cathedral to make way for the Queen: ‘We do not like this
moving of the statues of our dead.’41 A supporter of this gentlemanly move
35 ‘e Jubilee Celebrations’, Press, 21 August 1900, p. 2.
36 ‘e Jubilee’, Press, 4 October 1900, p. 6. Kidson’s drawings were reproduced in
the Weekly Press, 10 October 1900, p. 62. For Kidson, see Dunn, pp. 32–35.
37 ‘e Jubilee’, Press, 13 December 1900, p. 6. For Hutchinson, see Dunn, pp. 36–37.
38 ‘e Jubilee’, Press, 12 January 1901, p. 10.
39 ‘e Jubilee Memorial’, Press, 30 January 1901, p. 4.
40 ‘e Statue of the Queen’, Press, 19 February 1901, p. 4.
41 Ibid., p. 4. For the Godley statue, see Remembering Godley: A Portrait of Canterbury’s
Founder, ed. by Mark Stocker (Christchurch: Hazard Press, 2001).

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was the architect Frederick Strouts, who demanded: ‘o would not give
place to such a Queen?’.42 In the event, a site in nearby Market Square was
chosen in March 1901. is space would be renamed Victoria Square when
the statue was unveiled two years later.
In June 1901 the Duke of Cornwall and York (later King George V)
laid the foundation stone on the Christchurch leg of his royal tour. At the
ceremony, the acting Mayor A. E. G. Rhodes explained the signicance of
the memorial. He made no mention of Queen Victoria but instead referred
to the anniversary of the Canterbury settlement and to the current South
African War. is was probably due to protocol that discouraged personal
references to the Duke’s late grandmother. e Duke, however, stressed
precisely this function, describing the future memorial as
the tribute of aection to our late dearly beloved Queen. I
should say to you: teach your children to look up to it as a
memorial of her whose life was a noble example of devotion
to duty, of tender sympathy, and of loving regard for the well-
being of her people, and to us all a priceless heritage.43
In its coverage of the ceremony, the Press cried ‘Bravo Christchurch!’,
clearly moved by the warm reception accorded to the Duke and Duchess
‘who had journeyed so far to practically demonstrate the fact of the indivis-
ibility of the Empire welded together as it is by the links of love and aec-
tion for the rone they represent’.44
e progress of the memorial in Williamson’s studio in Esher was
closely chronicled. ‘Delight’ was expressed by William Pember Reeves,
agent-general in London, but the claim that it was ‘an entirely new and
original statue’ was somewhat exaggerated.45 A ‘spot the dierence’ com-
parison between Auckland and Christchurch would reveal minor changes:
the handkerchief and fan held by the Auckland gure were replaced by a
more stately sceptre. Williamson made more radical alterations to Kidson’s
proposed relief panel designs, replacing his version of the Canterbury pio-
neers with ‘a representation of the arrival of the colonists’. e sculptor
also recommended that the reliefs portraying ‘typical forms of industries’
formed separate compositions on the upper parts of the pedestal. For a
further one hundred guineas, Williamson oered to provide four such g-
ures, representing manufactures, pastoral activities, education, and agricul-
ture.46 ese suggestions were adopted.
42 Frederick Strouts, Letter to the Editor, Press, 5 March 1901, p. 2.
43 Loughnan, p. 230. See also Judith Bassett, ‘“A ousand Miles of Loyalty”: e
Royal Tour of 1901’, New Zealand Journal of History, 21 (1987), 125–38.
44 ‘e Ceremony in Victoria Square’, Press, 24 June 1901, p. 7.
45 ‘Jubilee Memorial’, Press, 27 September 1901, p. 3.
46 ‘Jubilee Memorial’, Press, 25 January 1902, p. 5.

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Another nine months elapsed before the statue itself was ready, and
‘strong disapproval’ was expressed by Reeves over the delay. Such situa-
tions often occurred in Victorian sculpture. Williamson’s explanation —
identical to that later oered by Alfred Drury in relation to his Wellington
Memorial — was perfectly legitimate: the veritable logjam of statuary,
especially Queen Victorias, awaiting casting at the foundry.47 With the
roll of honour relief for the recently concluded South African War, such
delay was probably fortunate. e list of those commemorated was still
not nalized, and notices were inserted in newspapers asking for names
to be forwarded.
e statue was shipped to Lyttelton in January 1903 (Figs. 3, 4). Only
one panel, giving the Queen’s dates of birth and death, accompanied it.
is suced for the opening ceremony, held on the Queen’s birthday, 24
May, now styled ‘Empire Day’.48 e occasion provided an opportunity
for further pronouncements on the late sovereign and the province. Reece
asked, ‘what would our children and future generations learn from that
bronze and that stone?’. e answer was ‘above all things our love for our
late Sovereign Queen Victoria’. ey would also learn ‘of the grand old
pioneers who left the Old Country and who came out here to found the
Britain of the South’. Equally important was
the tribute we paid to the Empire, in that we suered the best
of our life’s blood to ght for it [. . .]. e monument would
also tell of the visit of the son of our King [. . .]. And those
who in the future looked at the monument would nd that we
consider our success was founded upon arts and industry, and
last, but not least, upon our grand free system of education.
Reece hoped the latter would be extended ‘so that every boy and girl
qualied to do so might reach the University’.49 Imperialist patriotism and
progressivism were thus intertwined; the memorial nicely embodies the
political values of the long Liberal premiership of Richard John Seddon
(1893–1906).50
It was all the more poignant that Reece’s references to the
Canterbury pioneers, the South African War, arts, industry, and educa-
tion were in the abstract, as these reliefs still awaited completion. Fifteen
months elapsed before the second unveiling in April 1904, when focus
47 ‘Jubilee Memorial’, Press, 22 October 1902, p. 7.
48 See, especially, Martina Droth, ‘Empire Day Unveilings and Ceremonies’, in
Sculpture Victorious: Art in an Age of Invention, 1837–1901, ed. by Martina Droth, Jason
Edwards, and Michael Hatt (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014), pp. 127–31.
49 ‘Canterbury’s Jubilee Memorial’, Press, 26 May 1903, p. 5.
50 For an overview of the Liberal era (1891–1912), see Michael King, e Penguin His-
tory of New Zealand (Auckland: Penguin, 2003), pp. 258–82.

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Fig. 3: Francis John Williamson, Queen Victoria, 1901–04. Victoria Square,
Christchurch. Wikimedia Commons.
fell inevitably on the roll of honour. e Press took another opportunity
to wax patriotic, paying tribute to the record ‘in imperishable bronze’ of
Canterbury’s sons who had died in South Africa. At a time when major
coverage was accorded to the Paris–Madrid motor race, the newspaper

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Fig. 4: Francis John Williamson, Education, detail from Queen Victoria. Victoria
Square, Christchurch. e Author.

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could now dare to claim that ‘Queen Victoria has become more of a
memory than would have been deemed possible when grief at her death
still lay heavy upon us’.51 Little was said of the memorial’s artistic quali-
ties. Was it ever regarded, as was originally hoped, as ‘an object lesson’
to ‘rising artists’? Probably not, but the reliefs and upper gures pos-
sess robust realism that reects the neoclassically trained Williamson’s
responsiveness to the New Sculpture. To modernist eyes, the Athena-
like ‘Canterbury’ sending forth her ‘Roughriders’ (the ird Contingent
of Boer War Volunteers) to South Africa may appear an incongruous
conation of ossied classicism and contemporary military realism
(Fig. 5). Yet Williamson’s pictorial competence and the immedi-
ate intelligibility of the composition remain impressive. Perhaps the
most remarkable achievement of the memorial is its visually — and
economically — eective iconographic combination, oered by no other
comparable edice known to this author. In short, its concept represents
‘Kiwi ingenuity’ avant la lettre.
51 Leader, ‘To-Day’s Ceremony’, Press, 7 April 1904, p. 4.
Fig. 5: Francis John Williamson, Canterbury Sending Forth her Roughriders, detail
from Queen Victoria. Victoria Square, Christchurch. e Author.

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Queen Victoria in Wellington: an edice ‘of naonal character’
Wellington entered the monumental game later than Auckland and
Christchurch. e Queen’s death acted as an immediate catalyst and, with
the emotion it generated, the statue fund stood at £1022 by early February
1901. Attempts by the secretary of the memorial committee, Charles Collins,
to appeal to the whole colony for donations towards an edice ‘of national
character’ were, however, ‘looked upon unfavourably’. e Otago Daily
Times, for example, complained that ‘it is really too much to ask the people
of Dunedin [. . .] to contribute towards the erection of a statue which the
large majority of them would never see’.52 Such responses caused ‘consider-
able disappointment’ in Wellington: ‘the antagonism is looked upon as a
relic of provincial jealousy, which was thought to be dead.’53
Acting on behalf of ‘the Citizens of Wellington’, Premier Seddon
cabled Reeves in London to secure ‘the services of a rst-class artist [. . .]
who would supply a creditable statue for the sum of £3000’, over twice the
total budget of the Auckland memorial.54 Reeves conrmed that the sum
was sucient, and proposed to negotiate with sculptors Edward Onslow
Ford and Hamo ornycroft ‘with a view of arranging for the production
of a statue [. . .] worthy of erection in the capital city of our colony’. He
contacted English newspapers to publicize the proposal and named the
sum. Although Reeves predictably received ‘several applications’ from
interested sculptors, he did not favour a competition as ‘rst-class artists
decline to compete in such cases’.55 As leading sculptors of the time, Ford
and ornycroft would have made obvious choices, certainly more so than
the brilliant but erratic Alfred Gilbert. ornycroft, however, had less inter-
est than his contemporaries in executing Queen Victoria portraits, while
the chronically overworked Ford died suddenly in December 1901. e
eld was thus open to a sculptor of almost equal prominence, Alfred Drury
(1856–1944).56 Drury had studied under Jules Dalou at the National Art
Training School in South Kensington, where one of his contemporaries was
Arthur Riley, director of Wellington Technical School and on the memorial
committee. By August 1902 Drury’s model had arrived for inspection, prior
to its scaling up.
Spielmann believed Drury represented ‘the highest contemporary
standard of English sculptors’, while fellow critic A. L. Baldry called his
52 Leader, Otago Daily Times, 8 February 1901, p. 4.
53 ‘e Queen’s Statue in Wellington’, Press, 13 February 1901, p. 7.
54 Prime Minister’s Oce to William Pember Reeves, 1 February 1901, Archives
New Zealand IA 1/1901/939.
55 William Pember Reeves to Richard John Seddon, 23 February 1901, Archives
New Zealand IA 1/1901/939.
56 For Drury, see Susan Beattie, e New Sculpture (London: Yale University Press,
1983), pp. 107–21, 167–74.

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work ‘nobly imagined and nely thought out’.57 A generation younger than
Williamson, Drury’s imaginative range was greater and he was already an
associate member of the Royal Academy, a status denied Williamson. And
while Williamson delivered the dignied realism required of such commis-
sions, Drury’s work oered the sensuality, charm, and renement of turn-
of-the-century New Sculpture, going beyond exactitude without sacricing
formality. Spielmann called his Victoria statues ‘good, reticent and full of
character’ (‘Modern British Sculpture’, p. 505). Drury executed three of
them: those at Portsmouth (unveiled 1902) and Wellington (1905) are iden-
tical (Fig. 6), while the still larger one at Bradford (1904) has been described
as imparting ‘a regal and imperialistic air to the image of Victoria’ (Darby,
p. 383).
ree bronze pedestal reliefs were commissioned for Wellington
and these assumed an entirely dierent, less provincial character than
their Christchurch counterparts. eir subjects comprised e Signing of
the Treaty of Waitangi; Fine Arts, Literature and Music; and e Inventions of
Victoria’s Reign. Using the lost-wax process to ensure neness of detail
entailed ‘a tremendous lot of work’ for Drury.58 He exhibited Fine Arts,
Literature and Music, with its gracefully draped ‘female gures in owing
raiment’ at the Royal Academy in 1904, prior to its shipment overseas.
However, e Signing of the Treaty of Waitangi has monopolized subsequent
historical attention (Fig. 7). e New Zealand Times’s London correspondent
called it ‘a very striking and original piece of work, worthy of the historic
importance of the event it commemorates’.59 By signing the treaty, Māori
leaders had ceded the young Queen te kāwanatanga katoa (‘the complete
government’) over their land (Orange, pp. 47–48). Drury was given histor-
ical advice in reconstructing the scene by Major General Horatio Gordon
Robley, who had illustrated episodes from the New Zealand Wars in the
1860s and whose moko (facial tattoo) illustrations, even today, are admired
by ethnologists for their authenticity.60 e Māori chief shown signing the
treaty is a reluctant signatory, who has come ‘without his war-paint to indi-
cate [. . .] protest’.61 Yet he will shortly shake hands with the governor,
Captain William Hobson, who will declare ‘He iwi tahi tatou’ (‘We are all
57 M. H. Spielmann, ‘Sculpture’, in Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th edn (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1911), <http://www.theodora.com/encyclopedia/s/
sculpture.html> [accessed 18 December 2015]; A. L. Baldry, ‘A Notable Sculptor:
Alfred Drury, A.R.A.’, Studio, 37 (1906), p. 16.
58 Alfred Drury, letter to the Mayor of Wellington [John Aitken], 17 December 1903,
Wellington City Archives (WCA), Box 1977, Part 1.
59 ‘Statue for Wellington: Noble Monument of Queen Victoria’, New Zealand Times,
29 November 1904, p. 6.
60 For Robley, see Leonard Bell, Colonial Constructs: European Images of Māori
1840–1914 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1992), pp. 99–124.
61 ‘Statue for Wellington: Noble Monument of Queen Victoria’, p. 6.

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Fig. 6: Alfred Drury, Queen Victoria, 1901–05. Cambridge Terrace and Kent
Terrace, Wellington. e Author.

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Fig. 7: Alfred Drury, e Signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, detail from Queen Victoria.
Cambridge Terrace and Kent Terrace, Wellington. e Author.

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one people’) (Orange, p. 60). e Reverend Henry Williams, leader of the
Church Missionary Society in New Zealand, looks on benevolently.
In 1991 William Renwick described the relief as a piece of New
Zealand European or ‘Pakeha self-congratulation’, which celebrated
the benets that the imperial connection was supposed to bestow on
Māori.62 is represents a common interpretation at the time of the trea-
ty’s angst-ridden sesquicentenary commemorations. Renwick’s verdict
now appears a good instance of ‘the enduring myth of exceptionally
benign Maori–Pakeha relations’ providing a soft target for later histo-
rians.63 e latter often underestimate the important role that Māori-
related iconography played in visual representations of New Zealand.
ile the posture of the reluctant signatory appears submissive, Drury
makes the scene look dignied and credible. He portrays the symbolic
moment of an act of trust between two peoples, one that gave Māori the
rights and privileges of British subjects. e relief’s success led to its
frequent depiction in history textbooks and also on the 1940 centenary
ten shilling banknote.64
Drury’s reliefs are rare examples of the New Sculpture produced for
a specically New Zealand context. eir appeal is probably greater today
than that of the statue. Massive in scale — at 305 cm, over twice her actual
height — Victoria is portrayed in her bodice and a full skirt, embroidered
with a decorative motif of national emblems at the hemline. She wears her
customary small crown over her long widow’s veil, and carries her sceptre
and orb. e latter, surmounted by a gurine of Victory, echoes the motif
rst used in Gilbert’s Winchester Memorial (Powell, pp. 284–85). e
weight and mass of the cloak are strongly emphasized and in sheer bulk, the
statue conveys ‘the magnitude and strength of the British Empire’ (Darby,
p. 382). Perhaps it was her sister statues in Portsmouth and Bradford that
62 William Renwick, ‘A Variation of a eme’, in Sovereignty & Indigenous Rights: e
Treaty of Waitangi in International Contexts, ed. by William Renwick (Wellington: Vic-
toria University Press, 1991), pp. 199–220 (p. 202).
63 Belich, p. 190. Such an approach can rebound. Michael Hatt’s discussion of the
Wellington memorial contains several historical errors, including the claim that
land conscation was the cause rather than the consequence of the New Zealand
Wars. He states that the breach of the Treaty of Waitangi by settlers was ‘erased
in the monument’, when it was almost certainly never even contemplated. See
Michael Hatt, ‘Edwardian Monuments to Victoria’, in Sculpture Victorious, ed. by
Droth, Edwards, and Hatt, pp. 120–26 (p. 125). To their credit, Hatt and fellow
curators of ‘Sculpture Victorious’ adopted this author’s suggested substituted
text for the exhibition timeline. See ‘Statue of Queen Victoria 1905’, <http://www.
centerforbritishart.org/victoria-monuments/214/statue-of-queen-victoria>
[accessed 18 December 2015].
64 Reserve Bank of New Zealand, ‘e History of Bank Notes in New Zealand’,
<http://www.rbnz.govt.nz/currency/money/0094089.html> [accessed 18 December
2015]. See also Renwick, p. 200.

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provoked George Bernard Shaw to complain irreverently of Victoria ‘being
represented as an overgrown monster [. . .]. All young people today [1919]
now believe that she was a huge heap of a woman.’65
Casting the statue was delayed for the same reasons as Williamson’s
counterpart in Christchurch, and caused similar concerns to its patrons.
In March 1904 Drury explained to J. R. Palmer, town clerk of Wellington:
e statue being so great in bulk it is impossible for them [the
Morris Singer Foundry in Frome, Somerset] to cast more than
one such gure at once. Before the death & as a result also of
the death of the late Queen — they had a tremendous rush of
work — so they were only able to start casting a short time
ago.66
ese delays resulted in the monument being unveiled without its main
reliefs, a situation that again paralleled that of Christchurch.
e unveiling on 29 April 1905 was performed by Ranfurly’s succes-
sor, Lord Plunket, who emphasized the importance of the capital having ‘a
worthy monument’. In its original location in Post Oce Square, close to
the waterfront, the statue assumed for Plunket the signicance of a mini-
Statue of Liberty:
I personally think it a very happy circumstance that this statue
should stand where it does, for it proclaims to the anxious,
weary immigrant, as he arrives upon your shores, that besides
the better material prosperity he has been led to expect, he
has come among a loyal people, and is under the British
Constitution, with the freedom which every British subject
enjoys, and which is the envy of every foreign nation.67
Compared with what the Christchurch Press would have made of it, cover-
age of the event in the Wellington Evening Post was perfunctory and the
sculptor was even misidentied as Drury’s lesser-known contemporary,
Henry Pegram.68 Could this have been because Christchurch took its role
as ‘e Britain of the South’ more seriously? Or was Queen Victoria already
becoming a distant memory by April 1905?
Subsequent history of the respective memorials in Christchurch and
Wellington provides a telling contrast in attitudes to heritage. e former
65 G. B. Shaw, ‘e Ugliest Statue in London’, Arts Gazette, 31 May 1919, p. 273. Cited
in Bernard Shaw on the London Art Scene 1885–1950, ed. by Stanley Weintraub (Uni-
versity Park: Penn State University Press, 1989), p. 428.
66 Alfred Drury, letter to J. R. Palmer, 10 March 1904, WCA, Box 1977, Part 1. See
also Hatt, pp. 122, 124.
67 ‘e Queen’s Statue: Unveiled on Saturday’, New Zealand Times, 1 May 1905, p. 7.
68 ‘e Queen’s Statue’, Evening Post, 29 April 1905, p. 6.

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was cleaned and moved several metres in the landscaping of Victoria Square
in 1989 and received a subsequent cleaning in the mid-1990s. Its Wellington
counterpart was moved in 1911 from its original site to a median strip divid-
ing Kent and Cambridge Terraces. Exposed to heavy trac, it is visually
compromised by nearby power poles and trolleybus wires. e memorial
le in the Wellington City Council archive forms testament to bureaucratic
inertia and neglect. Desultory attempts were made to improve its appear-
ance. In 1947 the council gave the statue several coats of lacquer, producing
a ‘sickly, bright, greasy appearance’. is angered New Zealand’s leading
sculptor of the time, Richard Gross, and the lacquer was soon removed in
response.69 In 1954, when Victorian sculpture had reached the nadir of its
critical reputation, the Evening Post declared the memorial to have ‘no artis-
tic pretensions (though such, in all seriousness, were once claimed for it)’.70
In the 1960s steps were built around the statue to counteract the gradual
tilting that had occurred over the years. No attempt was made to clean it
and repeated but inexpert oers from schoolchildren and voluntary organ-
izations were declined. Attempts in the mid -1990s to relocate Victoria to
her original site foundered, following vociferous protests from residents
and businesses in the locality — Mount Victoria — who wished her to stay
put.71 In 2000 the council nally announced that the memorial would be
repaired and cleaned in time for the centenary of Queen Victoria’s death
in January 2001.72 A reection (or refraction) of the belated postmodern
appeal of her memorial was its role in December 2008 as focal point for a
light show by the ‘Finalist’ painted sculpture art movement to accompany
the ocial announcement of Wellington as Arts Capital of Australasia.
Images projected onto Victoria included a massive water lily and a Union
Jack.73
The beauful south: Queen Victoria in Dunedin
Like Wellington, Dunedin resolved to erect a Queen Victoria Memorial
after learning of her death. e Otago Daily Times stridently supported the
cause, asserting in early February 1901:
We repeat that the statue must be adequate: a paltry or
unworthy memorial of Queen Victoria would be a shame to
69 Richard Gross, letter to Will Appleton, 6 November 1947, WCA, Box 1977, Part 1.
70 Evening Post, 6 March 1954, p. 3.
71 Wellington City Council, Report of the Commissioners on an Application to Relocate the
Queen Victoria Statue to Post Oce Square, 10 June 1996, WCA.
72 Evening Post, 29 August 2000, p. 4.
73 ‘Wellington “the Arts Capital of Australasia”’, <http://wellington.scoop.co.nz/?
p=48> [accessed 18 December 2015].

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the community. Dunedin loyalty is no mere lip service, and
Dunedin aection for the Queen’s memory is no conventional
complaisance.74
In a subsequent editorial, the newspaper observed that ‘Dunedin would
achieve a somewhat unenviable distinction’ if, alone among the metropoli-
tan centres, it could boast no tting memorial to the departed monarch.75
is would have reduced Dunedin to the status of considerably smaller
towns such as Napier and Nelson where ambitious plans to erect statu-
ary soon foundered because of their modest demographic and economic
bases.76
At a public meeting in late February 1901, Dunedin Mayor Robert
Chisholm advocated a Queen Victoria Free Public Library as a memorial.
Such utilitarianism provoked ercer opposition than that encountered
in Auckland four years earlier, probably because grief for the recently
deceased Queen was still intense. Keith Ramsay, shipping agent, former
mayor, and Presbyterian, considered it ‘shocking taste on the part of the
citizens to take advantage of the Queen’s death’ by promoting a library.77 In
its report, the Otago Daily Times regretted that ‘a good deal of unnecessary
heat’ had entered the discussion.78 It proved suciently hot for Chisholm
to resign from the memorial committee chairmanship three weeks later. He
was replaced by Sir Henry Miller, Speaker of the Legislative Council.
Selection of the sculptor was entrusted to a former Dunedin politi-
cian, Richard Oliver, then living in England. e committee initially sug-
gested that a replica of Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll’s marble statue of
her mother Victoria (1893; Kensington Gardens, London), might be consid-
ered.79 is drew a brusque response from the Otago Daily Times which, with
some justication, claimed that ‘no statue of any importance now in exist-
ence reveals the personality of the late revered Queen so inadequately’.80
Its portrayal of the young Victoria at the time of her coronation was consid-
ered inappropriate for Dunedin over sixty years later. With the imminent
visit of the Duke of Cornwall and York, the Otago Daily Times proposed that
he should lay the foundation stone, which he consented to do. If he was
74 Leader, Otago Daily Times, 8 February 1901, p. 4.
75 Leader, Otago Daily Times, 20 February 1901, p. 5.
76 For the proposed Napier statue of Queen Victoria, see Poverty Bay Herald,
22 February 1901, p. 2. A public meeting was held on 26 March 1901 to discuss
the possibility of a Nelson statue, chaired by the mayor, J. A. Harley. It resolved
to adjourn for a month; no further meeting is recorded. See ‘Proposed Queen
Victoria Memorial’, Nelson Evening Mail, 27 March 1901, p. 2.
77 ‘Memorial to the Queen’, Otago Daily Times, 1 March 1901, p. 2.
78 Leader, Otago Daily Times, 2 March 1901, p. 6.
79 See Jo Darke, e Monument Guide to England and Wales: A National Portrait in
Bronze and Stone (London: Macdonald, 1991), pp. 60–61.
80 Leader, Otago Daily Times, 29 March 1901, p. 4.

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remotely weary of such tasks — this was the fth and nal stone that he
laid on his New Zealand visit — the punctilious and dogged future sover-
eign gave no such indication. He armed that ‘we are right to perpetuate’
the memory of the ‘ever-lamented Queen [. . .] by the highest powers of
the sculptor’s mind and hand’ (Loughnan, p. 323). e Otago Daily Times
would remember these ‘moving words’ at the unveiling almost four years
later.
As with Christchurch, there was early mention of considering local
artists: Allen Hutchinson was noted by the Otago Daily Times as ‘a sculptor
of considerable talent’.81 However, the role given to Oliver by the memorial
committee made a British sculptor virtually inevitable. Working together
with several other ‘old New Zealand colonists’ living in England, Oliver
commissioned Herbert Hampton (1862–1929).82 is represented a sound
choice, although Hampton’s art historical status is far more obscure than
that of Drury or Williamson. Hampton suers as a lesser light in a constel-
lation of talented late nineteenth-century sculptors and has received little
mention even in recent literature. Educated in London and Paris, he exhib-
ited fty-ve works at the Royal Academy between 1889 and 1927. ile he
broke no new stylistic ground, he revealed unusual aptitude for carving in
marble when most contemporaries favoured modelling and bronze-cast-
ing: indeed, from 1897, bronzes accounted for 77 per cent of Queen Victoria
statuary (Powell, p. 285).
Besides Dunedin, Hampton executed memorials to Victoria in
both England and India: Ipswich, Lancaster, Jabalpur, and Nagpur. e
Lancaster memorial (unveiled 1906) is an elaborate and considerably more
expensive version of its Dunedin counterpart.83 Both works combine a mar-
ble statue with subsidiary, lower level, bronze ornamentation. Hampton’s
fastidiousness was indicated in his rejection of two awed blocks of marble
for the Dunedin carving, which helped explain the four-year gap between
dedication and unveiling.84 e impression left by the regal gure in her
state robes is rigid, frigid, and even intimidating (Fig. 8). Perhaps this is
mitigated by the relatively benign, if predictably unamused countenance
of the Queen. At the memorial committee’s behest, she was portrayed not
as the elderly woman of Drury’s egy, but in middle age, ‘that period of
her life best known to New Zealand colonists who came to this country 30
or 40 years ago’.85 e use of marble unintentionally reinforces Victoria’s
status as ‘the Great ite Empress’, yet this seems strangely appropriate
81 Leader, Otago Daily Times, 2 April 1901, p. 4.
82 For Hampton, see o Was o 1929–1940 (London: Black, 1941), p. 587.
83 Darke, pp. 239–40. For Hampton’s Indian memorials, see Steggles and Barnes,
pp. 49, 89, 292–93.
84 ‘Queen Victoria Memorial Statue’, Otago Witness, 29 March 1905, p. 33.
85 ‘Queen Victoria Memorial Statue’, Otago Daily Times, 24 March 1905, p. 3.

25
Mark Stocker, ‘A token of their love’: Queen Victoria Memorials in New Zealand
19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century
, 22 (2016) <hp://dx.doi.org/10.16995/ntn.724>
Fig. 8: Herbert Hampton, Queen Victoria, 1901–05. Queens Gardens, Dunedin.
Wikimedia Commons.
given Dunedin’s overwhelmingly ‘Old British’ racial conguration as well
as its southerly latitude. Other than the Duke of Cornwall and York’s fare-
well intonation of ‘Kia Ora!’ — warmly reciprocated by the crowd — any
Māori presence related to the Dunedin memorial appears non-existent
from newspaper reports (Bassett, p. 135).

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Mark Stocker, ‘A token of their love’: Queen Victoria Memorials in New Zealand
19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century
, 22 (2016) <hp://dx.doi.org/10.16995/ntn.724>
At the unveiling ceremony on 23 March 1905, Plunket praised the
‘energy and good taste’ of the memorial committee. Its eorts had culmi-
nated in ‘not only a lifelike representation of her late Majesty, but [. . .]
a monument to the sculptor who formed it’. As an archetypal, ‘improvi-
dent’ Irishman, Plunket teasingly praised ‘Scotch’ Dunedin for raising
such a monument in ‘no parsimonious spirit’. Indeed, at slightly over
£3000, it cost over twice the Auckland memorial and almost a third more
than those in Wellington and Christchurch. Other speeches variously
described it as an encouragement to ‘all that was artistic’ and ‘a product
of the highest art’.
References were also made to ‘the splendid figures at the base of
the statue’, representing Wisdom and Justice, qualities described as ‘the
most significant points of her Majesty’s reign’.86 The impact is similar
in Lancaster, where Jo Darke considers the subsidiary sculpture ‘the
real reward of the monument’ (p. 240). The motif of two meditative,
seated sculptures flanking the main figure is found on a smaller scale
in Gilbert’s Victoria Memorial at Winchester and this soon became part
of the common language of the New Sculpture. As a friend of Gilbert
who inherited his studio and later, reverently, reconstructed the original
model of the famous Eros statue, Hampton would have acknowledged
such links.87 These female personifications, together with the charm-
ing pair of early Renaissance-styled putti supporting the central bronze
panel, soften the statue’s austere aspect (Fig. 9). Unfortunately, proper
appreciation of the memorial in its entirety has long been impaired by
its site at the very edge of Queens Gardens (formerly The Triangle),
alongside the major traffic thoroughfare of Cumberland Street. In
1905 its proximity to the proposed new railway station as well as to
Dunedin’s commercial centre, The Exchange, would have seemed highly
appropriate.
e Dunedin memorial, compared with that of Wellington, seems
to have generated greater civic pride, fervour on the part of the press,
and certainly the longest unveiling ceremony. Reviewing the ‘worthy and
beautiful statue’, the Otago Daily Times regarded it in a wider, historical
context: ‘Every monument erected [. . .] forms a valuable asset not only
for the citizens of today but for the men and women of tomorrow.’ e
newspaper solemnly advised ‘the present generation’ of its responsibility to
record ‘the young country’s history. at better way to do so than to erect
monuments?’.88
86 Ibid., p. 3.
87 Richard Dorment, Alfred Gilbert (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), p. 303.
88 Leader, ‘e Queen Victoria Statue’, Otago Daily Times, 24 March 1905, p. 4.

27
Mark Stocker, ‘A token of their love’: Queen Victoria Memorials in New Zealand
19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century
, 22 (2016) <hp://dx.doi.org/10.16995/ntn.724>
Fig. 9: Herbert Hampton, detail from Queen Victoria, 1901–05. Queens Gardens,
Dunedin. Wikimedia Commons.
Conclusion: an ‘honoured memory’
is article has considered that moment in ‘the young country’s history’,
when proudly imperial and ercely local ideals helped dene what might
be called a ‘proto-Dominion’ sense of identity. It seems remarkable that

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Mark Stocker, ‘A token of their love’: Queen Victoria Memorials in New Zealand
19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century
, 22 (2016) <hp://dx.doi.org/10.16995/ntn.724>
such prominently located signiers of that identity, the memorials to ‘the
extraordinary queen who gave her name to the era’, were eectively dis-
regarded for so long.89 In the period between the unveilings and the out-
break of World War II, they would provide a focal point for the patriotic
and charitable activities of the Victoria League, named for the sovereign.
Founded in London in 1901, several years elapsed before branches were
established in New Zealand, and there is no mention of them in accounts
of the memorials. Yet by the early 1910s, the league was making a signi-
cant cultural imprint in its educational and charitable activities, as well as
pouring remarkable energy into the maintenance of historic graves and
headstones. In 1923 the Canterbury branch resolved that on Empire Day
‘a wreath should be placed on Queen Victoria’s statue in Victoria Square’,
Christchurch, in ‘honoured memory of the Queen and also of the men who
fought and died in the South African War’.90 Only recently have concerted
attempts been made to ‘recover the history’ of the league and other related
patriotic organizations. Like their backcloth of Queen Victoria statuary but
perhaps even more so, they were for long politically unfashionable, even
unacceptable, victims of the condescension of a nationalist and then bicul-
tural posterity. In his essay ‘e State of Victorian Studies in Australia and
New Zealand’, Miles Fairburn laments the related neglect among his fellow
historians of ‘the minds of the people’ that created the built heritage of
Australasia, as distinct from the places and spaces themselves.91 I concur,
and have attempted to plug a small gap in this area.
89 John M. MacKenzie, ‘Introduction’, in e Victorian Vision: Inventing New Britain,
ed. by John M. MacKenzie (London: V&A Publications, 2001), pp. 9–25 (p. 10).
90 Katie Pickles, ‘Colonisation, Empire and Gender’, in e New Oxford History of
New Zealand, ed. by Giselle Burns (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2009),
pp. 219–41 (p. 232).
91 Miles Fairburn, ‘e State of Victorian Studies in Australia and New Zealand’, in
e Victorians Since 1901: Histories, Representations and Revisions, ed. by Miles Taylor
and Michael Wol (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), pp. 230–43
(p. 235).