PARISIAN STATUES

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 82, 5 April 1924, Page 16

PARISIAN STATUES

HISTORY OF THEIR MISADVEN- . -. ■. '.' TURES.. .-'•"

[An incidental result of the, Paris floods',. a writer in the- "Figaro" reminds us, is yet another postponement'of the unveil-, ing 'of. the statue of .Emile. Zola, whick° the sculptor Constantin Meunier was commissioned to execute so?long, ago as 190 p. The statue was to have . been placed last month in the selected position, in the Avenue Emile,Zola, says''a' correspondent .of the ""Manchester Guardian,-" but the neighbourhood of the site has been under water, and jjiow.-.the significant announcement.' is. made' ■"' >that nothing can. be,-done "until after the 'elections;" 'The removal of JZola'j ashes to' the Panthori,. it may be remembered, ;.caused soinetliing...like. -ai-rio.t,.'.and-: the name of the defender of Dreyfus still appears to he considered inflammatory when. political feeling, runs high.' .'The 'Meunier statue;-which, many who saw St> in an exhibition a year- or ' two ago thought a very fine piece of work, has. had a strange ■'history. . Mennier ■ took some nine years to complete it, and then when, at the outbreak of war," it was thrust into the Grand. Palais and neglected, :the'. bronze suffered ■■ terrible damage, which was. only repaired after tho-Armistice at great cost and labour. . .A long, chapter might bo written on "the misadventnre of Paris,statues, which Mr. E. V. Lucas describes as a population ■ "thousands strong." Perhaps ' themost melodramatic end of a Paris statue was the one which, during the Revolution, befell the bronze, statue, of Louis XIV. in the Place Vendon;e, then called the Place Louis-le-Grand. One day a rabble, provided with strong ropes, surrounded the statue, , among them the fiery Roso .Violet, who had hawked Marat's famous pamphlet, J'L'Ami due Peupie ' through, the-streets of Paris. She seized a rope-end, but.suddenly the great statue fell, and the woman's body was I crushed beneath it, , Statues in the Place vendome ard constantly in peril. The figure at the top. of the great column j made out of Russian- and Austriani cannon in Napoleon I.'s time has on "several occasions, been removed or destroyed, the last experience of this kind being in the days of the Commune.' ;