Robert E Lee statue removed after Charlottesville violence finds new home at Texas golf resort

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A statue of US Civil War Confederate general Robert E Lee removed four years ago has turned up at a private Texas golf resort after selling at auction for $1.44m.

The bronze statue was taken down from a park in Dallas following the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, which left one woman dead.

It was donated to the Lajitas Golf Resort in Terlingua, near the Mexico border, which is owned by Texas oil and gas billionaire Kelcy Warren, according to the Houston Chronicle.

The 1935 sculpture of Lee on horseback had collected dust in storage for two years until it was sold to Texas law firm Holmes Firm PC. The firm’s founder, Ronald L Holmes, did not respond to The Independent’s request for comment by the time of publication.

The statue of Lee, riding next to another mounted soldier, is at the entrance of the 18-hole “Black Jack’s Crossing” course about 430 miles west of San Antonio.

The manager of the resort, Scott Beasley, said its presence was only to preserve the “fabulous piece of art”.

“I would say that of the 60-plus thousand guests we host each year, we’ve had one or two negative comments,” he told the Houston Chronicle. “I’d bet that 80 to 90 per cent of the people that come to the resort take a picture of it.”

Created by Alexander Phimister Proctor, the statue is among several Confederate monuments removed across the United States in the past four years since the far-right rally in Virginia.

The statue of the Confederate icon at the centre of the Charlottesville rally was not removed until July of this year.

Black Lives Matter Houston activist Brandon Mack took issue with the argument that Confederate statues can be kept as “an appreciation for art”, and asked whether that would apply to all iconography throughout history.

“We don’t glorify the swastika; we don’t have monuments (of) Adolf Hitler,” he said.

Mr Beasley, however, said he was not concerned about those offended by the statue.

“They were uneducated,” Mr Beasley told the Chronicle. “(They) didn’t know the true history and the story. (We) have not had any verbal comments at all and it wouldn’t matter. If you know your history about Robert E Lee and everything about him, it’s fabulous.”