RIVER GOD FOUNTAIN 1862 / Charles Summers (1825-1878) / The Renaissance style figure of a river god was created by Victoria’s most important sculptor of the period. The fountain concept was by Clement Hodgkinson, Assistant Commissioner of Crown Lands and Survey and designer of the Fitzroy Gardens. This was the first fountain in the Fitzroy Gardens, made possible by the supply of water to Melbourne from a dam on the Plenty River at Yan Yean. It was erected in 1862 at a site to the south-east near Clarendon Street and Gipps Street, where it stood for nearly 100 years. In 1995 the original figure was restored and re-erected here in a new rockery and pond similar to its original setting. One of the water mains from Yan Yean crosses the Gardens a few metres to the east of this site.
River God Fountain, Charles Summers, Stone and cement fountain, 1862, Fitzroy Gardens, Eades St entrance
Summary
Location: Fitzroy Gardens, Eades St entrance
Also known as Old Man Fountain, and Neptune.
A cement larger than life-size figure of a man, holding aloft a fully opened clam shell shaped fountain. The figure is atop a large rockery.
While Summers was the sculptor of this larger than life-size statue, which holds aloft an opened clamshell-shaped fountain, it was created in collaboration with Clement Hodgkinson. Born in England in 1818, Hodgkinson trained as a civil engineer before coming to Australia. A talented and diligent man, he joined Melbourne’s Survey Office as a temporary draftsman and rose rapidly through the ranks to become deputy surveyor-general in 1858 and assistant commissioner for Crown Lands & Survey in 1861. Described in the Illustrated Melbourne Post as ‘that most tasteful of amateur gardeners’, he was responsible for the development of the Fitzroy, Flagstaff and Treasury Gardens. Hodgkinson was also instrumental developing the Yan Yean project, a reticulated water supply that was essential for the growing city and which allowed its gardens to exist on the scale they did. Based on works by Italian sculptors of the Renaissance, River God celebrated this permanent water supply for Melbourne.
In 1956, council proposed replacing River God; it was in poor condition and 19th-century sculpture was thought to be old fashioned, despite the fountain’s historical significance. In 1962, it was replaced with Robin Boyd’s Fountain of the Birds. Some three decades later, River God was discovered in a council depot. In 1996, it was conserved and returned not to its original position between Gipps and Hotham Streets, but to above a newly created rockery at the Eades Street entrance. While it is an important historical monument, River God is also notable as an example of the work of Melbourne’s foremost early sculptor, Charles Summers.
