Historical narratives and subtexts of identity: case studies of Glasgow’s public portrait statues

Burrows, Erin (2025) Historical narratives and subtexts of identity: case studies of Glasgow’s public portrait statues. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.

Abstract

Portrait monuments function as public history ‘texts’ that express an audience-specific local history by drawing on the past to inform the present through historical narrative. These narratives are grounded not so much in the biography of a portrait statue’s subject, but rather in group and place identities. Using a narrative theory framework and a place-based, people-centred approach, this thesis will demonstrate how public portrait statues function as historiographical texts, the ways in which those texts are coloured by the contexts in which they were formed, and the ways in which subtexts of identity inform or are shaped by the selection of public figures for commemoration in a given place. The examples of contexts and subtexts described in four Glaswegian case studies are intended to provide historians and policy makers with a deeper means of evaluating the benefit of public monuments in public spaces, particularly around discussions of installing new statues or removing those that are contested, anachronistic, or irrelevant.

The first case study on the nineteenth-century monuments of George Square demonstrates that the primary aim of these portrait statues was to project an image of Glasgow as the exceptional Second City of the Empire, whose social and environmental negativities were blended out by the assemblage of great personages in the city centre. The case study on La Pasionaria, erected in 1980, argues that while the monument was meant to honour the Spanish Civil War’s International Brigades, with Dolores Ibárruri as an avatar of their sacrifices and determination, the portrait statue was also an instrument and production of modern concerns relating to political power, deindustrialisation, and collective identity. An examination of the 2018 Mary Barbour monument in Govan describes how a broader understanding of the history on their doorstep reinvigorated pride and self-determination in the community and the district. Finally, the examination of the Duke of Wellington monument contrasts and compares conflicts around identity both at the time of its installation in the nineteenth century and when a traffic cone began to appear on his head in the late twentieth century. Each of these case studies will show that historical narratives imbued in portrait statues tell only a prologue of the subjects they portray and that the thrust of the narrative and its accompanying subtexts are initially formed by monument commissioners, but can be interpreted in a variety of ways by the public.

• Item Type: Thesis (PhD)
• Qualification Level: Doctoral
• Subjects: D History General and Old World > DA Great Britain; H Social Sciences > HM Sociology; N Fine Arts > NX Arts in general
• Colleges/Schools: College of Arts & Humanities > School of Humanities > History
• Funder's Name: University of Glasgow College of Arts
• Supervisor's Name: Abrams, Professor Lynn and Madgin, Professor Rebecca
• Date of Award: 2025
• Depositing User: Theses Team
• Unique ID: glathesis:2025-85404
• Copyright: Copyright of this thesis is held by the author.
• Date Deposited: 21 Aug 2025 15:38
• Last Modified: 21 Aug 2025 15:42
• Thesis DOI: 10.5525/gla.thesis.85404
• URI: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/85404