Dodo
Thomas Beattie (b. c.1863)
Category
Art / Sculpture
Date
c. 1920
Materials
Concrete
Measurements
640 x 410 x 640 mm
Place of origin
Northern Ireland
Order this imageCollection
Mount Stewart, County Down
NT 1221067.2
Caption
Four plump dodos, cast in concrete, preside over the Italianate Garden at Mount Stewart. Animals extant and extinct surround them, including a cheetah and a dinosaur lounging amid lush and fragrant planting. Conceived by Edith, Lady Londonderry (1878–1959), the Dodo Terrace was laid out after the First World War, when she and her husband Charles, 7th Marquess of Londonderry (1878–1949), a serving officer, had opened their London home as the ‘Ark’, a retreat for friends involved in the war effort. Edith gave each member a pseudonym – animal or mythical – and later immortalised them in idiosyncratically playful garden statuary at Mount Stewart. Charles was ‘Charley the Cheetah’, while Edith’s father, Henry, 1st Viscount Chaplin MP (1840–1923), evoked the dodo in his old-school manner. Daddy the Dodo, Edith remarked, was ‘representative of an elder England’, of a ‘type of landed gentry’ soon to become obsolete, like the bird. The creatures were modelled by a local sculptor, Thomas Beattie (c.1866–1948), and are arranged around his sculpture of Noah’s Ark, a symbol of the haven Edith created in the midst of war.
Summary
Concrete, Dodo, Thomas Beattie (c. 1866-1948), 1920s. One of a set of four dodos cast in concrete, paired at the entrances to the Italian Garden, mounted on stone piers. Designed and produced by the local sculptor Thomas Beattie.
Makers and roles
Thomas Beattie (b. c.1863), sculptor