3-021-375 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Statue of Queen Mary II., by A. Munro, in Westminster Hall, [London], 1869. 'This is the most recent addition to the series of statues of our sovereigns...which are being placed "on trial" in Westminster Hall...[It] is the sixth work in marble which has been set up in the hall...The reader will perhaps remember...that these statues were commissioned not for Westminster Hall, but for the Royal Gallery of the Westminster Palace. But by some disgraceful carelessness they were ordered of much too large a size for the canopied niches already prepared in the gallery. By hacking away some of the carving, however, one was erected; when, of course, filling more than the space carefully calculated for by the architect, it appeared not simply quite out of its place, but hideously out of proportion...Thereupon Mr. E. M. Barry, duly and naturally animated by regard for his father's reputation, entered a protest; and this taking effect, he, casting about what to do with the misfits, proposed that they should be placed where we see them; that the series should include all our Sovereigns down to the present time, sites for them to be allotted all round Westminster Hall, including the newly-raised upper extremity called St. Stephen's Porch'. From "Illustrated London News", 1869.