{"id":481105,"date":"2026-02-15T06:49:21","date_gmt":"2026-02-15T06:49:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/481105\/"},"modified":"2026-02-15T06:49:21","modified_gmt":"2026-02-15T06:49:21","slug":"statues-of-amy-sherwin-australias-first-opera-star-unveiled-at-hobarts-hadleys-hotel-in-bid-to-cement-legacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/481105\/","title":{"rendered":"Statues of Amy Sherwin, Australia’s first opera star, unveiled at Hobart’s Hadley’s Hotel in bid to cement legacy"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Australian opera star who was famous before Dame Nellie Melba arrived on the scene, but who died penniless, has finally been immortalised in stone and bronze, in a bid to enshrine her legacy.<\/p>\n

Amy Sherwin, known as “the Tasmanian Nightingale”, was one of the greatest sopranos of her era<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Onlookers view the marble statue after its unveiling. (ABC News: Sophie Jaggers)<\/p>\n

Born in Huonville, in rural southern Tasmania, Sherwin rose to international fame \u2014 but died in 1935 at age 81 in a London nursing home “lonely and penniless”, as one US newspaper reported at the time.<\/p>\n

Sherwin has been largely eclipsed in the public’s mind by Dame Nellie Melba<\/a> as Australia’s first international opera star.<\/p>\n

In 2023, a fund was established to give Sherwin “the hometown recognition she deserves”.<\/p>\n

The fruits of that were officially unveiled today at Hobart’s Hadleys Hotel, in the form of a life-size marble statue, with a bronze replica, created by artist Peter Schipperheyn.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A street festival, which included a re-enactment of Sherwin arriving in Hobart, was held outside the hotel, in Hobart’s CBD, to mark the unveiling.<\/p>\n

The bells of St David’s tolled as Tasmanian soprano Jacqueline Ward, playing the part of Sherwin, rode in on a carriage before entertaining the crowd with two musical performances.<\/p>\n

President of the Amy Sherwin Fund, Bob Brown, said Sherwin “took the world by storm” in the 1870s.<\/p>\n

“She’s inspiring because she came out of the bush, and she said, ‘When you want to go for something, go for it and keep going,'” Dr Brown said.<\/p>\n

“She personifies that; she was the most famous Tasmanian in the world.”\"A<\/p>\n

Soprano Jacqueline Ward, playing the part of Amy Sherwin, sang for the crowd. (ABC News)<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A photograph of Amy Sherwin taken during Sherwin’s American tour, in early 1887. (Supplied: National Film and Sound Archive)<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

The design was also a challenge for Schipperheyn, as he had never carved a 19th-century dress before. (Instagram: Peter Schipperheyn)<\/p>\n

The Amy Sherwin Fund has raised $200,000 for the marble statue, with an additional $50,000 still required to fully fund the artwork.<\/p>\n

The separate bronze replica, which was installed on the balcony of Hadley’s, was funded by the hotel.<\/p>\n

Dr Brown hopes the two statues will ensure Sherwin is remembered.<\/p>\n

“Tasmanians don’t know about her, but she’s coming back now. She’s firing back and everybody is going to know about her, and she’ll inspire young Tasmanians,” Dr Brown said.Sculptor’s ‘adventure’ in bringing Sherwin out of stone\"Bronze<\/p>\n

The bronze statue, pictured in place on Hadley’s balcony, is better suited to the weather than marble. (ABC News: Sophie Jaggers)<\/p>\n

Peter Schipperheyn has been sculpting since 1979, after he travelled from Australia to Italy at just 19 and fell in love with the artform.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Peter Schipperheyn with his Amy Sherwin sculpture. (Instagram: Peter Schipperheyn)<\/p>\n

The Melbourne-based sculptor said his involvement in the Amy Sherwin statue project started with a phone call “out of the blue” from Bob Brown.<\/p>\n

The more he learned about Sherwin, the more he wanted to pick up his chisel and bring Sherwin’s legacy back to life.<\/p>\n

“I thought it’s a lovely project, a great thing for me to be involved in,” Schipperheyn said.<\/p>\n

Loading Instagram content<\/p>\n

As part of an extensive research phase, Schipperheyn reviewed many photographs of the opera singer, with one in particular creating a “flash” in his mind of a concept for the statue<\/p>\n

“I saw a beautiful photograph of her in a 19th-century dress, which is very ornate with all the pearls and lace work and these big puffy sleeves. I immediately saw that in stone and how I might be able to do that,” he said.<\/p>\n

Taking inspiration from the photograph, he created a maquette, a small-scale model used to help artists visualise what a larger sculpture could look like.<\/p>\n

\"Close-up<\/p>\n

Peter Schipperheyn working on the details. (Instagram: Peter Schipperheyn)<\/p>\n

He sought advice from a fashion designer friend to help recreate the back of the gown, as no photographs of it existed.<\/p>\n

The next step saw him create a full-size model, but rather than heading straight to stone, Schipperheyn used clay to create a plaster mould of his final design.<\/p>\n

He then took that plaster mould all the way to Italy, where he hand-picked a block of white marble from the country’s famous quarries in Carrara.<\/p>\n

“This particular block is exceptional, the one I’ve made Amy out of. I’m really blessed with that and it’s because it’s never easy getting the right block.”\"Close-up<\/p>\n

Schipperheyn says he got lucky with the particular block of marble chosen for the statue. (Instagram: Peter Schipperheyn)<\/p>\n

Schipperheyn explained the block had been sitting around for 20 years, as no one had previously been willing to pay its advertised price.<\/p>\n

“They won’t sell them unless they get a certain price for them, and fully understandable. They’ll keep them there. And lucky me, I got a beautiful block.”<\/p>\n

\"black<\/p>\n

Amy Sherwin died in London in 1935. (Supplied)<\/p>\n

Schipperheyn said he found the process of bringing Sherwin out from the rock to be “like an adventure”.<\/p>\n

“I do like spending my time in this way, and always with the hope and aspiration that the time I’ve put into it is meaningful, and that it will have some value to current times and also future times,” he said.<\/p>\n

“It was great to get to know another piece of history in the form of Amy Sherwin when it was being forgotten, and now there’s a focus on her again and what she achieved.”<\/p>\n

Schipperheyn said he hopes the work will remind anyone who takes pleasure in viewing it “of the better things that human beings are capable of”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Australian opera star who was famous before Dame Nellie Melba arrived on the scene, but who died…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":481106,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[244186,64,63,134,57174,63272],"class_list":["post-481105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-amy-sherwin","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment","tag-opera","tag-statue"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=481105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481105\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/481106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=481105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=481105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=481105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}