Mighty Hunter Statue, Queen Marys Gardens

The Mighty Hunter Statue is an ornamental sculpture located on a pedestal to the west of the lake head in Queen Mary's Gardens. It was signed and dated by the artist Albert H Hodge in 1913. The pedestal is made of Portland stone and supports a cast bronze statue of a putto, who is nude except for a belt, drapery, sandals, and enriched leggings. The putto is depicted struggling to hold a naturalistically modeled duck above his shoulder, while the duck appears to be fighting to fly away with its beak wide open.

The statue is believed to have been commissioned by the painter Sigismund Goetze for his home and is paired with another sculpture known as The Lost Bow. It was presented to Queen Mary's Gardens in 1939 after the gardens were redesigned by Duncan Campbell, the Superintendent of Regent's Park for the Ministry of Works. Goetze, who resided at Nuffield Lodge, contributed several features to Queen Mary's Gardens, a practice that his wife continued in other London parks after his death through her Constance Fund. Albert Hodge, the sculptor, initially trained as an architect in Glasgow but became a specialist in architectural sculpture, working on significant projects including the Victoria and Albert Museum and Glamorgan County Hall in Cardiff, as well as reliefs on the Robert Burns monument in Stirling.