Mr Jamieson the Draper and the Polar Bear

Dundee

"The statue commemorates the 1878 escape and subsequent safe recapture of a polar bear [named Bruin], one of two brought from Davis’ Straits by a local whaling ship and bought for exhibition in Commercial Street by a Mr Woods. According to contemporary reports the escapee was one of two housed in a wooden box with an iron grating which slipped off the barrow transporting them and broke open. After scaring off on lookers and barging into a High Street clothes shop the bear was tempted out by a piece of beef and safely recaptured. The iceberg element refers to the precarious future faced by polar bears while the figure is Mr Jamieson, the haberdashery shop owner." David Annand notes that "John Gray thought it a good idea to mount them on an iceberg so that the bear is reaping revenge on humanity for destroying its habitat."

Quoted from the Public Art Dundee website