23.07.2007
Forgotten letters and photographs, dating back nearly 100 years by sculptor Paul Montford (1868-1938), have been brought to life again by University of Brighton researcher Catherine Moriarty for an exhibition in Australia.
Moriarty has spent the last three years transcribing the archived papers, sent by Montford to his family in England from Australia, where he emigrated in 1923. Until now the memorabilia had been stored in the Brighton home of Montford's 84-year-old son, Adrian Montford.
Detail of letter from Paul Montford to his brother Louis, September 1929.
Montford Estate, Brighton
The family documents have now made the same journey back to Melbourne, for an exhibition about Montford's work. Shedding new light on the making of the National War Memorial of Victoria in Melbourne, known as the Shrine of Remembrance, the exhibit will reveal much about the sculptor's working processes.
One of the Shrine of Remembrance buttress groups designed by Paul
Montford.
Catherine Moriarty. June 2007
The exhibited letters and photographs also offer a rare insight into Australian culture, society and politics. He wrote to his brother Louis in 1928:
"The country has a scale about 20 times that of England. Go for a walk and you end up just where you began – the countryside hasn't altered – it doesn't for hundreds of miles…From the railroad you can see miles of dead trees – half trees – stumps – clearances. Sad and weird, no the country isn’t exactly inviting – it never ends so the great delight is to get to the sea – at least you cannot go on and on."
A South Londoner who trained at the Royal Academy of Arts, Montford decorated Battersea Town Hall, the façade of the V&A and the Kelvingrove Bridge in Glasgow. Others works prior to his emigration included the statue to Henry Campbell-Bannerman at Stirling (1913) and his competition entry for the monument to the Cuban revolutionary Máximo Gómez. Montford was responsible for many landmark sculptures in his adopted home town, Melbourne.
Moriarty, who traveled to Australia with Montford’s grandson, Piran Montford, to launch the exhibition said: "Little is known about the processes of making commemorative sculpture and Montford's archive reveals in extraordinary detail how memorials were built."
"They explain the collaborations between architects and sculptors, craftsmen and women and contractors. Montford's role in the building of the Shrine was controversial because he was neither an ex-serviceman nor Australian. At a time of fervent nationalism, this mattered."
A chapter by Moriarty on the building of the Shrine will be published later this year in The Returned Soldiers bug: making the Shrine of Remembrance, Melbourne in N. Saunders and P. Cornish (eds.), Contested Objects: Material Memories of the First World War, (Routledge, 2007). Moriarty is currently preparing a book on the work of Paul Montford.
The Commemorative Sculpture of Paul Montford, 6 July – 6 October 2007, Shrine of Remembrance, Melbourne.
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