Home UpLucknow 5, Lucknow Museum's Display of Imperial Statuary

What to do with British statues of the great and powerful? You can let them stand, smash them up, send them home, or move the stuff to a museum.

The gallery is like a barn, but consider the alternatives.

Victoria with sceptre and globe.

Definitely not amused.

No wonder.

A slightly more benign mood.

Yet another, this one on the baleful side. Where, precisely, did all these statues stand? The museum doesn't say, but there certainly was a bronze Victoria in Lucknow's central park. The kiosk survives.

George V.

Same, in cameo.

Sir John Woodburn, Governor of Bengal, 1898-1902. He died that year, age 54. A few years earlier, he had been the first British administrator to commit substantial funds to stabilize the Sun Temple at Konarak.

Unidentified, though listed by the museum as General Lasad, Commissioner of Avadh {Oudh].

Anthony Patrick Macdonnell, Lt. Governor of the Northwest Provinces and Commissioner of Oudh, 1895-1901. Known as "the Bengal Tiger," he had a prickly personality that prompted one Indian Civil Service colleague to observe: "If Antony and another are cast away in an open boat and only one of them can live, it will not be Antony who is eaten" (Philip Mason, The Guardians, vol. 2 of The Men Who Ruled India, 1963, p. 188).

Although even Curzon found him somewhat cold and lacking in generosity of character, he was glad to have him. Writing from India to a colleague in London, Curzon declared: "It is such a God-send in this pygmy-ridden country to find a man who at least has mental stature" (D. Gilmour, Curzon, 1994, 157). Macdonnell left India for the hot seat of Home Secretary for Ireland.

This statue is presumably the one erected in Lucknow in 1907 at the expense of local landlords. If so, it was done by George Frampton, whose other works include the vastly more frequently seen statue of Nurse Edith Cavell that stands outside the National Portrait Gallery in London.

Bust of Harcourt Butler, Deputy Commissioner of Lucknow, 1906-08, then Lt. Governor of the United Provinces, 1918-23.

Sir Harcourt waves to nobody.

Outside the gallery, an uncredited work of counter-propaganda. Nehru and Rajendra Prasad rush to protect a fellow Indian attacked by brutal British officers.