1925 public laws – Ch.303 Sec.1

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CHAPTER 303 AN ACT TO PROVIDE FOR THE REPRODUCTION OF CANOVAS STATUE OF WASHINGTON. Whereas, the General Assembly of North Carolina, by joint resolution adopted at the annual session in one thousand eight hundred and fifteen, authorized and requested the Governor of this State to purchase on behalf of the State a full length statue of General Washington, and under the authority thereof Governor William Miller engaged the services of Canova, the Roman sculptor, and had executed a full length statue of Wash- ington, which was received at Raleigh, December the twenty- fourth, one thousand eight hundred and twenty-one, and set up in the rotunda of the State House; and Whereas, the burning of the State House on the morning of June the twenty-first, one thousand eight hundred and thirty- one, left Canovas statue of Washington a heap of ruin. The General Assembly at its annual session held during the same year, appointed a committee, of which William Gaston was chair- man, to provide for the restoration of the statue and appropriated five thousand dollars ($5,000) for that purpose. An English sculptor, Ball Hughes, was engaged to restore the statue. One thousand dollars as earnest money was paid to him, but the effort proved impracticable as the artist had insufficient material or design in the old ruins with which to restore the statue. Canova had died in one thousand eight hundred and twenty-two, and the existence of the original model being then unknown in America the question of restoring the statue was definitely aban- doned, and the ruins were placed in the State Museum, where an eminent sculptor recently appraised their value at something near fifty thousand dollars; and Whereas, in one thousand nine hundred and eight the Secre- tary of the North Carolina Historical Association, Mr. R. D. W. Connor, accidently learned through Honorable Belamy Storer, then American ambassador to Austria, that the original model made by Canova himself still existed in the Canova Museum at Passagno, Italy, and thereafter through the proper diplomatic channels made request for permission to have made a copy of the model. Whereupon, the Italian government at its own expense had a reproduction of the cast made and presented it to the North Carolina Historical Commission, by whom it was received in one thousand nine hundred and ten, and is now preserved in the North Carolina Hall of History; and Whereas, the General Assembly, at the regular session in one thousand nine hundred and twenty-three, provided in chapter two hundred and fifty-three, Public Laws, for the appointment of a commission on the reproduction of the Canova statue of Wash- ington, and charged it with the duty of collecting data and making recommendation relative to the reproduction in marble of said statue. The said commission made its report. The report of the said commission was presented to and ordered printed by the General Assembly at the present session, and in the said report are recommendations that the statue be reproduced and that four thousand dollars be appropriated for that purpose: Now, therefore, The General Assembly of North Carolina do enact: