Statue of Meditation 1933

Summary

Location: Conservatory, Fitzroy Gardens A massive statue of a draped form, representing one woman in meditative introspection. In 1933, The Age reported that "Madame Gaston-Saint, of Orrong road, St Kilda, has offered the City Council a real art in the form of a large marble statue depicting Meditation. This piece is the work of the French sculptor Robert Delandere, and it was exhibited in the Grande Palais, Paris, where it excited favourable comment." Madame Gaston-Saint, an Australian who married a wealthy Frenchman, intended that the statue should be erected in memory of her father in Rheole, a small Victorian fruit growing town. Plans were damaged however, and the statue was presented to the Melbourne City Council in 1933. The Lord Mayor, Councillor Gengoult Smith, and the Chairman of the Parks and Gardens Committee, Alderman Stapley, together with other members of the Council accepted the statue from Madame Gaston-Saint in its current position on 24 April, 1933. They thanked her on behalf of the council and the City. Madame Gaston-Saint asked that the statue be offered "to honour the sorrow of those mothers whose sons fell in the Great War 1914-1918". Not everyone was happy with the work. Paul Montford, sculptor of the Peter Pan and Adam Lindsay Gordon statues, wrote to the Lord Mayor on 19 April 1933. "Apparently this marble was carved for a cemetery, “sorrow” was the subject meant, and it was rightly refused by those who gave the commission to the sculptor," he wrote. "In my opinion its artistic value is far below any other statuary in the Fitzroy Gardens, and it is probably the worst figure in any public place in Melbourne."