Ireland
Ireland has not been a friendly country for equestrian statues. To some extent this is understandable, given the long Irish history of struggle against English domination and the fact that the statues portrayed their oppressors. Dublin was once famous for its quality equestrian statues, but the IRA blew them up.The statue of William III by Grinling Gibbons was unveiled with great pomp and ceremony in 1701. The statue very much resembled the statue that this sculptor made of Charles II in 1685. Three students daubed the statue with mud in 1710 and stole the kings’ sceptre. They were sentenced to six months imprisonment, given a fine and had to stand for a day in front of the statue they had vandalized, with a placard bearing witness to their offence. The statue in Dublin attracted a lot of aggression, as it served as a focal point for the annual Orange Order celebrations of the Battle of the Boyne, and of the king’s birthday. The statue was blown up in 1926, but the explosion did not mark the end of its traumatic life, as the king’s head was removed from the statue while it was placed in storage. The statue was never repaired. The Irish government denied a request from Northern Ireland to move it to Belfast.
The statue of George I by John van Nost the Elder was unveiled in Dublin in 1722 amidst great celebrations. However, this monument – also for a British monarch – became a target for republican sympathizers. The statue only survived because it was removed in 1753 and kept in storage for almost two centuries. The statue was sold to the Barber Institute in Birmingham in 1937, where it can still be seen today.
Another statue of George I by John van Nost the Younger, erected in Cork in 1761, tumbled from its pedestal in 1862 after many years of neglect.
A statue portraying George II by the same sculptor (1758) was the target of vandalism almost from the start. In 1818, several attempts had been made to remove body parts of the king. The statue was blown up in 1937.
Dublin was also not friendly to the equestrian statue of Hugh Gough by John Henry Foley (1878), erected in 1880. The unveiling of this doomed statue by his grandfather turned out to be the earliest memory of Winston Churchill as he recalls in his autobiographical work My early life 1874–1904. For the sad story of this statue, I refer to Hugh Gough.
A copy of the magnificent horse of Gough returned to Dublin in a surprising way 20 years later. See Misneach.