Chloe
The hotel is well known for the nude painting Chloé, painted by French artist Jules Joseph Lefebvre in 1875. Measuring 260 cm by 139 cm, it depicts the naiad in "Mnasyle et Chloé", a poem by the 18th-century French poet André Chénier.
It was purchased for 850 guineas by Dr Thomas Fitzgerald of Lonsdale Street in Melbourne. After being hung in the National Gallery of Victoria for three weeks in 1883, it was withdrawn from exhibition because of the uproar created especially by the Presbyterian Assembly. It was bought for the Young and Jackson Hotel in 1908 for 800 pounds, and was damaged in 1943 by an American serviceman who threw a glass of beer at it.
The painting hangs in the Young and Jackson Hotel in Melbourne, Australia, where it has been since 1909. One of the most popular paintings on display in Melbourne, Chloé is considered an icon of the city, and was the mascot of the Royal Navy frigate HMAS Melbourne.
She has graced magazine covers, had wine named after her and poems written to her. She has experienced fame and adoration and has won high acclaim from critics. Her career began, like the many models after her, in Paris. She was created and moulded by a Master.
She is a Melbourne icon, mascot for the HMAS Melbourne, an extremely fine work of art; she is an ingénue, a nymph, a celebrity. She is Chloe, the famous nude portrait which has graced the walls of the Young and Jackson Hotel since 1909.
Throughout her life, Chloe has kept company with artists, poets, wharfies, Prime Ministers and drunks, soldiers, sailors, celebrities, bushies, labourers and art connoisseurs. Her history involves transformation, death, intrigue, love, war, depression and passion.
Chloe now hangs in Chloe's Bar, so you can enjoy a drink or a meal while you admire this true Australian icon.
History
The site was purchased by John Batman, one of the founders of Melbourne, in 1837 at the fledgling settlement's first Crown land sale. Batman had a home built on the site for his children, which became a schoolhouse in 1839. Warehouses were erected on the site after the schoolhouse was razed in 1853. The Princes Bridge Hotel opened there on 1 July 1861 by John P. Toohey and his brother who later went on to found the Tooheys Beer brand.
The Hotel was renamed to Young and Jackson after the Irish diggers who took it over in 1875, cousins Henry Figsby Young (b. 1849 Dublin, Ireland - d. 29 September 1925) and Thomas Joshua Jackson (b. 1834 - d. 9 May 1901). The freehold was owned by the Koegh family for 123 years until it was purchased by Marcel Gilbert in 1979.
The hotel is an amalgamation of five separate buildings of two and three storeys, with the original 1853 bluestone building designed as a three-storey residence, with a butcher's shop on the ground floor.
It was later extended in both directions, with all buildings rendered and painted to match each other by the 1920s. Since the 1920s the exterior hotel has been dominated by large advertising signs, even to this day. It is owned by the Endeavour Group.
Young and Jacksons is listed on the Victorian Heritage Register.