Otago Sculpture Trust

In Site Library - Greater Dunedin: Robbie Burns (The Octagon) (1886)

InSite

Robert Burns Statue       Octagon      Sir John Steell, sculptor.

The statue of Robert Burns which stares out over the Octagon is the work of the pre-eminent Scottish sculptor of the nineteenth century, Sir John Steell. It is a testament to the late nineteenth century cult of Burns who was hailed as the poet of the Common Man, the Ploughboy Poet. It is also a reminder of the city's Scottish antecedents - Dunedin being the Gaelic name for the Scottish capital Edinburgh. There were other connections too. The first minister of First Church, Thomas Burns, was the poet's nephew and it was the poet's great grand niece Agnes Burns who officially unveiled the statue before an enthusiastic crowd of 8000 in May 1887.

Steell was concerned that his portrayal should be accurate. He studied the celebrated portrait of the poet by the artist Alexander Naysmith and even borrowed a cast of Burn's skull from the Edinburgh Phrenological Society. The original of Steell's design can be seen in Central Park, New York, where it was unveiled to much favourable comment. Copies followed in Dundee and London. In fact the Dunedin version, like the London one, has had subtle changes made from the two earlier models. The head looks less sharply upwards and there are small adjustments to the arms and legs. It was cast in bronze at Steell's foundry in Edinburgh and shipped to Dunedin in late 1886.

The sculpture was paid for by public subscription. The fact that it was a copy rather than an original design reduced the cost of the project. However, times were hard in the 1880s and at the time of the unveiling there was still £250 outstanding which was only settled the next year. It may be that there was some reluctance to subscribe to a memorial for a hard-drinking womaniser whose posthumous collection of bawdy verse "The Merry Muses of Caledonia" was out of step with Victorian morality. (Interestingly it is for those very verses that Burns is celebrated in Germany where there is apparently a tradition of earthly folk poetry.)

The City Council voted that the statue be sited on the reserve near the Railway Station but those members of the public who had subscribed raised objection and, after a poll of subscribers (one vote for every five shilling donated), the council changed its mind and the statue was erected on the site originally planned for it at the West of the Octagon where it now stands.

And what is the poet looking at?  For a while it seemed he was staring balefully across the Octagon to the sixty-eight foot high Gothic revival column dedicated to the memory of his nephew Thomas which was erected amid some controversy in 1892 and dismantled by the city council in 1948. In fact, Burns is in the throes of poetic composition. He is sitting on an elm branch, symbolic of Scotland, and he is writing "Thou Lingering Star" an elegy to his lost love Highland Mary. Fortunately, during the recent conservation by François Leurquin the Bard has had the quill returned to his right hand (it had been missing for forty odd years) and he can now inscribe his timeless verses onto the scroll at his feet.

Richard Dingwall

Text Copyright Richard Dingwall