Burns Statue, Central Park, New York

A monochrome photographic print of a ceremony taking place at the first statue to the poet to be erected outside Scotland.   This bronze statue of Robert Burns by Sir John Robert Steell, the eminent Victorian sculptor, was unveiled in Central Park, New York in 1880. It was intended to be a companion statue to one of Sir Walter Scott by the same sculptor, erected some eight years previously.   For his sculpture Steell closely followed the portrait of Robert Burns painted by Alexander Nasmyth in 1787. It therefore conformed closely to the popularly held image of the poet's likeness and was greatly admired, with casts being commissioned for statues in Dundee, London and Dunedin, New Zealand.   The Dundee statue was unveiled only two weeks after the one in New York in 1880 and the third cast was erected in the Thames Embankment Gardens in London in 1884. The Dunedin statue was unveiled in 1887. The city of Dunedin was founded by Rev Dr Thomas Burns, son of Gilbert Burns and a nephew of the poet.