Otago Sculpture Trust

In Site Library - Greater Dunedin: Byrd Memorial (Unity Park) (1966/67)

InSite

Admiral Byrd Memorial.......  Unity Park.............  Felix W. de Weldon, artist.

This portrait bust of the American pilot and Antarctic explorer Richard Evelyn Byrd (1888 ‑ 1957) is one of three versions this sculpture. Another is at McMurdo Sound in Antarctica and the third in Washington D.C. in the United States.

Rear Admiral Richard Byrd was the first Antarctic explorer of the mechanical age. In 1928, at the age of thirty, he already had a significant reputation for his long distance flights out of sight of land. He had flown across the North Pole and across the Atlantic. His navigational skills during these flights made him a natural candidate to plan flights over the South Pole.

The expedition under his command sailed from New York through the Panama Canal. Dunedin was the last port of call before the two ships, City of New York and Eleanor Bolling, landed in Antarctica. It is this event that is commemorated with this sculpture which was donated to the city by the American organisation, the National Geographical Society in December 1966, although it was some weeks before the work was installed and available for public view.

The memorial is a bronze bust of Richard E. Byrd on a polished black Norwegian marble pedestal. The artist, Felix W. de Weldon, seems to have based his representation on a photograph of Byrd at McMurdo. In the photograph Byrd is shown hatless, turned away from the camera, smiling. De Weldon has turned the informal facial expression into a mask of determined repose as the Admiral looks South. Here we feel, is a man capable of meeting any challenge. The fur collar of the Antarctic explorer hints at another sculptural convention, the laurel wreath of fame.

Felix De Weldon (1907 - 2003) was one of the United States most revered sculptors of large public monuments and portrait busts. Born in Vienna he travelled widely, living for a time in the United Kingdom where he was commissioned to create the bust of King George V to commemorate the 25th year of his reign in 1935. Other royal commissions followed.

In 1937 the artist moved to the United States where he lived for the rest of his life. His most celebrated work is the over twelve metres high Marine Corps War Memorial in Washington D.C. better known as The Flag Raising On Iwo Jima. This dramatic and popular image was inspired by Joe Rosenthal's action photograph, taken during the 1939 -45 war, of six American soldiers raising the flag on Mount Suribachi, Iwo Jima, a small island of Iwo Jima 660 miles south of Tokyo.

Richard Dingwall

26 January, 2004

Text Copyright Richard Dingwall