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GEORGE WASHINGTON STATUE
Trafalgar Square, WC2
at front of National Gallery

This statue of the first president of the United States, which was unveiled in the presence of a large crowd of people on June 30, 1921, was a gift to the people of Great Britain from the State of Virginia. At the unveiling, Dr. Henry Louis Smith, president of Washington and Lee University, who headed the deputation that presented the statue, said that Washington was "the immortal product of English ancestry and American rearing." Lord Curzon accepted the gift on behalf of the nation.

Standing on a base that itself is standing upon Virginia soil brought to England for that purpose, the statue is one of 25 replicas of a marble statue of Washington that stands inside the Virginia state capitol in Richmond, Virginia.

In his right hand, Washington holds a cane. His left sits atop a bundle of wooden rods, representing the 13 original states.

In light of the fact that Washington headed the armies that fought against Great Britain during the American War for Independence, many people are surprised to see it here, but as a newspaper pointed out in 1921, it was intended to be a "symbol of the reconcilation of which time and change have brought about between the two great English-speaking peoples who have a joint share in the fame and memory of George Washington," reminding readers that before he fought in a war of rebellion against the British crown, he fought for the crown, against the French, in what Americans call the "French and Indian War," known in Britain as the "Seven Years War."

References: The Daily Telegraph, July 1, 1921, p.10 and the Manchester Guardian, July 1, 1921, p.8.