Tour Scotland Photograph Robert Burns Statue George Square Glasgow

Tour Scotland photograph of the Robert Burns Statue in George Square on ancestry visit to Glasgow, Scotland. Scotland's national poet born 1759, died 1796. The statue was by George Edwin Ewing, born in Birmingham, England, on 8 July 1828, the son of the Sculptor, Artist James Ewing and Ann Stow, he was the older brother of the sculptor James Alexander Ewing. His childhood was spent in Edinburgh, where he lived with his family at 26 Bread Street, aged 13, in 1841. He and his family later moved to Glasgow, where they lived at 1 Antigua Street, whilst George and his wife, Sarah, lived at 3 Antigua Street, in 1851. He worked in Liverpool and London, where he gained experience working in the modelling room of Covent Garden Theatre, before establishing a successful practice in Glasgow, in 1859. Ewing's most important commission in Glasgow was for the statue of Robert Burns, George Square, his only public statue in bronze, which was later completed with three bronze panels illustrating scenes from Burns' poems, by his brother, J A Ewing. Joined by his brother James in 1875, they lived and worked together at various addresses in the city before George moved to the USA in 1879, for health reasons. He worked in New York and Philadelphia but failed to achieve financial success there and became impoverished. He died suddenly at the Brevoort Hotel, New York, whilst working on medallion portraits of Sir Henry Irving and Ellen Terry. He was found dead in bed on the morning of 26th April 1884, with his room full of gas from a light jet that had been left on. His funeral took place at St Luke's Protestant Episcopal Church, Hudson Street, New York, on 29 April, and his remains were afterwards buried in Greenwood Cemetery, Brooklyn.



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