Meet Our Lady of Victories First Friday

Public Art Committee to lead a brief discussion on the statue in the heart of Monument Square
Portland, Maine - June 7th as a part of First Friday Art Walk, the Portland Public Art Committee (PPAC) will feature Art in Our Front Yard: Portland’s Public Art Collection with a discussion of Our Lady of Victories located in Monument Square (photo attached). PPAC member Jere Dewaters will lead a discussion of the statue, its history and significance within the city’s collection. The public is encouraged to join the PPAC Friday June 7th and learn about the art in their front yard and share in a discussion of the unique place public art holds in our community.

Our Lady of Victories is arguably the most well-known piece of public art in Portland.  In the late nineteenth century, erecting civic monuments in memory of historic events and people became a popular custom.  Located in Monument Square in the heart of downtown, Our Lady of Victories commemorates the Portland soldiers who fought and died in the American Civil War.  In 1873, seven years after the devastation of the Great Fire, an association was formed under the leadership of Brevet Brigadier General John Marshall Brown to erect a monument in honor of the 5,000 lives the city lost to the Civil War, fully one-sixth of its population.

The sculpture commission was awarded to Franklin Simmons, one of the 19th century’s leading sculptors and a Maine native, who cast the sculpture in his studio in Italy.  Simmons had created the Longfellow bronze memorial, situated in Portland’s Longfellow Square, a few years earlier.   The commission for the granite pedestal and smaller, bronze installations went to the distinguished New York architect, Richard Morris Hunt, who also designed the base for the Statue of Liberty.  The total cost of the statue was nearly $36,000, of which $20,000 went to Simmons.

The central figure, a fourteen foot-high bronze, female Victory, is a symbol of unity.  Victory is holding a sword wrapped in a flag in her right hand and a shield and a branch of maple leaves in her left hand.  She wears a crown of leaves and is dressed in classical garb.  She stands atop Hunt’s Doric-inspired pedestal of granite adorned on either side by a group of bronze figures, one representing the army and the other the navy.  On the North side three army figures stand in front of six flags.  The general in the center, Brigadier General Francis L. Vinton of Fort Preble, Maine, wears a hat and a long jacket and carries a sword.  To the left of the Brigadier General is a soldier who wears a long jacket and holds a musket.  He stands in front of a drum, a bugle, and a backpack.  The soldier depicted on the right holds a ramrod and stands beside a cannon.  The South side bronze grouping honoring Maine’s sailors shows three sailors standing in front of six flags.  An Admiral in the center, Admiral David G. Farragut, who was a hero of the battles of New Orleans and Mobile Bay, holds binoculars.  The base of the monument was fully installed by 1889 with the inscription “Portland, to her sons who died for the Union.”

The dedication of the statue on October 8th, 1891 was an emotional even filled with great ceremony.  General Brown delivered the dedication speech and declared, “At last, a fitting monument on the fittest spot
of the fairest city of our land.”  With the dedication of this monument as Portland’s Civil War memorial, Haymarket Square was renamed Monument Square.  To this day, while the streetscape of Monument Square has changed tremendously, the monument itself remains the same, although the bronze has suffered mildly from the effects of oxidation.  In 1997 the city allocated $63,626 for the continued maintenance of the historic structure.  Each year on Memorial Day veterans, city leaders, and citizens gather to honor not only those who have made the “supreme sacrifice” but also “those who daring to make the ultimate sacrifice lived.”

In April 2000, the City Council established the Portland Public Art Program to preserve, restore and enhance the City’s public art collection. The Portland Public Art Program commissions art that engages with the surrounding environment to create, enrich, or reveal a sense of place, and to express the spirit, values, visions and poetry of place that collectively define Portland. Currently, the public art collection contains twenty-nine works of art that are permanently installed throughout the city, including works of historical significance dating from the nineteenth century, as well as contemporary pieces that reflect the diversity and spirit of the city. Of the twenty-nine pieces, twelve located within walking distance of the Arts District will be a part of the Art in Our Front Yard: Portland’s Public Art Collection series. For more information about the Portland Public Art Committee, visit www.portlandmaine.gov/planning/pubart.asp.

When:             Friday, June 7, 2013

                        5:30 PM                                      

Where:            Our Lady of Victories

Monument Square, Portland