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The Muse of the Rose Garden - statue dating back to Drummond mansion now resides in Beaconsfield library

The Gazette
Tuesday, June 2, 2009

The Muse of the Rose Garden, a limestone sculpture that once graced the gardens at Sir George A. Drummond’s Beaconsfield mansion, has found a new life at the Beaconsfield Library.
Newly restored by the Centre de conservation de Québec, Beaconsfield Mayor Bob Benedetti, along with members of the Drummond family – great granddaughter Dorothea McNiven and great, great granddaughter, Erica Hyde, both of Pointe Claire – unveiled the statue Tuesday, noting that it will now be safe from both the weather erosion and danger of vandalism.
“We are proud to have recovered this statue of historical and artistic value found in our territory,” he said. “By having restored its former luster, we have breathed new life into this work.”
The Muse could have just as easily been destroyed instead of undergoing a year-long restoration, Benedetti said noting that the statue, a draped female figure, holding a scroll but which is missing one arm, had been sitting in a green space at Evergreen Crescent for years.
“It had been vandalized and neighbours called to complain about the condition of the statue,” said Benedetti adding that the Muse had also darkened with age and was covered with bird excrement.
“I have to say she didn’t look too good,” Benedetti said.
“But when city workers asked me what to do with the statue, I said we should get it appraised - just in case, “ Benedetti added. “And when the experts saw it, their eyes almost popped out of their heads; there’s nothing like it in Quebec...”
According to specialists at the Centre de conservation de Québec, the Muse was sculpted in very soft, porous limestone,
indicating that it comes from Europe, not from Quebec and is comparable to sculptures dating from the 17th century found in France, in particular Versailles.
“The experts believe it dates back to 17th century France but ... up till now can’t say for sure,” Benedetti said. “We are currently trying to track down its provenance,,.”
The history of the statue’s origins in Beaconsfield dates back to 1902 when Drummond, a co-director of Redpath Sugar and president of the Bank of Montréal as well as a Board member of the Canadian Pacific Railroad, built a mansion called Huntlywood in Beaconsfield, north of the railroad and west of Saint-Charles Blvd.
The residence consisted of 32 rooms, gardens with pools, stables, coach houses and more.
At the bottom of the estate, a rose garden was planted, guarded at either end by two statues installed on their bases.
In 1912, Huntlywood was sold to Sir Montagu Allan, of the Allan Steamship Line, and renamed Allencroft.
Due to personal tragedies resulting from Word War I – Allan lost two daughters in May 1915 with the sinking of the RMS Lusitania when it struck by a German U-20 submarine and two years later a son was killed in action – the Allan family never lived in the mansion which lay abandoned and which burned in 1938.
The area was sold to developers following WW II and many of the gardens, pools and statues disappeared.
Only one of the two sculptures in the rose garden – The Muse of the Rose garden – survived the test of time.
Restoration of the Muse cost $20,000, said Benedetti, half of which was spent on the cost of shipping the statue to Quebec City.
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