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Burns Statue Adelaide
Australia's third statue of the bard was unveiled in the Reserve, Adelaide on 5th May 1894.
William J. Maxwell, a native Scot domiciled in South Australia, was commissioned to carve the life-size figure of the poet in Angaston marble, mounted on a pedestal of Monarto granite.
Maxwell broke with the tradition which had been fixated on Burns's ploughman image, and portrayed the poet in Fox livery, top coat, buckskin and top boots, as he would have appeared during his sojourn in Edinburgh.
Maxwell's figure was clearly derived from Charles M. Hardie's painting showing the bard reciting one of his poems at a salon held by the Duchess of Gordon. Incidentally, tradition asserts that the poem he recited was A Winter's Night but in view of that poem's radical sentiments it seems highly unlikely that he would have chosen that particular work for such a patrician assembly.
Maxwell was one of the runners-up in the competition for the statue erected at Kilmarnock, and it is thought that the Adelaide figure was based on the model he produced on the previous occasion.
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