Making an Irish Free State City – The Angel of Peace memorial
A passing reference in the Cork Examiner on 12 October 1926 details the ongoing engagement of sculptor Jerome Connor on a memorial to the victims of the RMS Lusitania ship. It was intended to construct a monument at Cobh through the philanthropy of a number of American subscribers.
The RMS Lusitania was sunk off the Old Head of Kinsale on 7 May 1919 by a German torpedo. A total of 1,198 men, women and children perished. A memorial in Ireland was commissioned in 1919 to commemorate the victims of the disaster and to the fishermen who helped the rescue, and to be the aspiration of being a monument to the cause of peace.
The Cork Examiner outlines that Jerome Connor was born in 1874 in Annascaul, county Kerry. At the age of nine, his family moved to America. Although he became resident there, he never adopted American citizenship. Among his accomplishments, he was a trained sculptor. Jerome was even selected to design one of United States coins.
However, a rule was discovered that design work could not be given to anyone who was not an American citizen.
In 1925 Jerome took up residence in Dublin and aimed to complete American commissions from Ireland.
The Cork Examiner newspaper noted of Jerome’s work and views: “He is most enthusiastic about the success of his recent casting operations, and believes that they can be made the beginnings of a profitable industry.
He intends to cast all his own work here in future and is of the opinion that much other metal work of various kinds, which we now pay foreigners to do for us, could be done equally satisfactory at home.”
According to the Cork Examiner in 1926, Jerome’s best statue was that of Robert Emmett, which was in the national museum at Washington and photographs of which were published in Irish newspapers. A bronze replica was made for presentation to the Irish National Gallery, as a gift from the American government to the Irish people.
The Cork Examiner lists other important pieces of work in 1926 such as those of John Carole, first Bishop and first Archbishop of the United States, Thomas Moore, and General John Shields of the United States Army.
In 1925-26 the Lusitania story was still politically sensitive. Jerome Connor’s design, put forward by victims’ families and US politicians, was deemed acceptable.
Giollamuire Ó Murchú’s detailed book entitled ‘Jerome Connor: Irish American sculptor 1874–1943' (Dublin, 1993), outlines that the journey to agreement involved an approach by the US State Department to Ireland’s fledgling Department of External Affairs. In August 1926, Minister for Home Affairs Kevin O’Higgins excluded a rival design by sculptor Andrew O’Connor.
In March 1927, the Ministers of External Affairs and of Local Government and Public Health approved what is now the Casement Square site. The choosing of the main square was highly symbolic. In addition, there was the historic renaming in 1921 of Queenstown becoming Cobh.
Giollamuire Ó Murchú’s book elaborates that in 1929, having completed a memorial in America to his friend and Lusitania victim Elbert Hubbard, Jerome Connor developed his Angel of Peace design. However, in October 1929 the Wall Street Crash seriously hindered the fund-raising effort.
In 1933, sculptor and art patron Mrs Harry Payne Whitney, whose brother Alfred Vanderbilt died on the Lusitania, offered assistance. However, she sought modifications to the design. Over a number of months Jerome Connor came up with several further scale models. The agreed design included the fishermen. The memorial that stands today emerged from this collaboration.
In November 1934, Jerome Connor returned to Dublin, where he completed the full-size plaster models. There he also carried out the carving and lettering and installed the stonework.
Being a bronze founder, he also then cast the fishermen. Local traders felt that the installation of the memorial would disrupt their business. Frustrated by the delays, the Urban District Council later tried to cancel the project.
The project was further hindered by major financial and legal problems, which arose for Jerome Connor. In 1936 a figure of ‘Éire’ he was working on for Killarney, as a project, financially collapsed.
However, momentum remained, even after Jerome’s death in 1943. Giollamuire Ó Murchú’s book reveals that his admirers, including Chief Justice Conor Maguire and sculptor Domhnall Ó Murchadha, worked to bring Cobh’s Angel of Peace memorial to completion. The two fishermen on the unfinished monument were erected in 1953.
Then further developments remained static until some preliminary work was pursued on the monument in preparation for the erection of the Angel of Peace, which was cast in Italy.
The cost of completing the work amounted to £2,500, which was subscribed by the Arts Council and local subscriptions.
The Irish Press on 13 July 1968 described the finding of the weeping fishermen and their bronze casting. “The figures were described by Donal Ó Murchú, the Irish sculptor, as one of the great public monuments of the world. Mr Ó Murchú, with the Dublin solicitor, David Charles, recovered the two bronze fishermen which lay abandoned in the Hammond Lane Foundry for seven years after Connor’s death.
It was Mr Ó Murchú also who received the plaster cast of the Angel from Mr Charles and sent it to Florence, Italy, to have it cast in bronze, as the work could not be done in this country.”
Whereas the original sculptor was Jerome Connor, the work of the Angel of Peace was completed by Domhnall Ó Murchú’s as well as the inscription for the memorial.