Shelbourne Hotel statues to be restored to plinths

Protected structure: One of the statues that was removed from outside the Shelbourne Hotel with gold-tinted ankle bracelets, which were misinterpreted to be shackles. The quartet are worth €200,000 to €300,000

Eoghan Moloney

September 24 2020 09:04 AM

Four statues that were removed from the Shelbourne Hotel after they were mistakenly identified as slaves, will be reinstated by the hotel, it has emerged.

The statues depict four women holding aloft torches and had been a part of the building since 1867.

The statues were removed from their plinths in July by hotel management in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement, when concerns were raised that two of the four statues may depict Nubian slaves.

Kyle Leyden, an art historian, told RTE's Morning Ireland that the idea of the statues being slaves “never sat well” with him so he did his own research on the Mathurin Moreau sculptures.

“A simple online search brought me to the foundry’s online catalogue from which the sculptures were ordered in 1867. In no way are they ever referred to as slaves. Their ethnicity is referred to as Egyptian and Sub-Saharan African, and in the Irish Builder catalogue of March 1867 it refers to them as Egyptian maids.

“Nowhere other than Elizabeth Cohen’s 1951 book does anybody refer to these statues as slaves and I think there was a degree of circular reinforcement with this,” believes Leyden.

The pieces were sculpted in 1867 in the Val d'Osne Foundry in Paris.

Leyden surmises that the statues were chosen by the building owner due to mania around “all things Egyptian” at the time, which stems from Napolean’s interest in the ancient civilisation.

The removal of the statues resulted in Dublin City Council issuing a warning letter to the hotel over the summer.

In the warning, the Council formally advised the hotel that complaints had been made against it and that it was under investigation for breach of the law governing protected structures.

Under the Planning and Development Act, no change can be made to a protected structure that would affect its character without prior planning approval.

The Shelbourne Hotel is located on St Stephen’s Green and is owned by American real estate firm Kennedy Wilson and operated by the Marriott Group.

It is believed the statues will be reinstated in the coming weeks and will be accompanied by a plaque to explain their origin and history.