Archaeologists and Aesthetes in the Sculpture Galleries of the British Museum: 1800-1939.
Vickers, Michael
When he resigned from the post of Librarian of the British Museum
in 1811, Francis Douce gave as one of his reasons 'the general
pride and affected consequences' of the 'motley and often
trifling committees' whose 'fiddle faddle acquisition of
incessant reports, the greatest part of which can inform them of
nothing, or, when they do, of what they are generally incapable of
understanding or fairly judging of' had made life thoroughly
objectionable (Bodley MS Douce e.28). But while the preparation of
reports for the trustees may have oppressed poor Douce, the existence of
such rich documentation in the British Museum has enabled Ian Jenkins (a
curator in the Greek and Roman Department and who is made of sterner
stuff) to reconstruct not only what was achieved in the way of
acquisition of Egyptian, Assyrian, Greek and Lycian, and of the
construction and arrangement of the Museum's sculpture galleries
over nearly a century and a half, but also the at times fierce battles
that were waged in committee over rival schemes. These debates and their
fruits throw a vivid light on the intellectual history of the period and
make this book of interest to a far wider audience than those interested
in the minutiae of museology.
The title neatly encapsulates the tension between art and
archaeology in the 19th century, a tension that is well brought out in
the debates that ocurred over the proposals in 1852--3 and 1857 to
amalgamate the nation's 'high art': to combine the
British Museum's sculptures with the National Gallery's
pictures. Edward Hawkins, Keeper of Antiquities from 1826--60, was loath
to part with his charges, and when asked by a parliamentary committee
whether he would be willing to make a distinction between the
archaeological and aesthetic qualities of the Elgin marbles, replied
'our collections are available for both purposes. They are for the
instruction of artists and for the gratification for men of taste and
they are also of great assistance to the historian'.
The inherent tension can be seen in the discussion over the very
plan of the Museum. Some wanted the building subordinated to the needs
of a collection that was forever growing; others argued successfully for
a building whose aesthetic qualities were paramount. Smirke's Greek
Revival 'Temple of the Muses' won the day.
The underlying ideology of the museum from its foundation was one
of Progress (dread word!): progress in the arts paralleled progress in
industry. Not for nothing was Westmacott's 'Progress of
Civilisation' the subject of the pedimental decoration of
Smirke's facade, and a document of which Jenkins makes skilful use
is a watercolour of 1845 by James Stephanoff which illustrates the
rationale. The sculpture of antiquity is shown -- somewhat
anachronistically -- emerging from 'primitive' origins in
Indian and Central American art to the 'perfection' of the
surviving decoration of the Parthenon: 'Each division minutely
observed, overlaps with the next and thus we pass through the
Achaemenid, Egyptian, Etruscan, early and later Greek until we come to
the crowning glory of the Elgin marbles and the age of Pheidias'
(p. 61). Colour is one quality that is left behind in this
'ascent', and it is ironic that in real life the Elgin marbles
were but the wrapping for a chryselephantine image of Athena that would
have been every bit as colourful as the painted Hindu and Javanese
figures of the 'primitive beginnings'. It was an aversion to
colour, coupled with the belief that grey was somehow
'progressive', that led to the Front Entrance Hall of the
Museum being decorated in its present drab tones. Jenkins, by contrast,
is alert -- and sympathetic -- to polychromy both in antiquity and in
the decorative history of his workplace. See especially his plate III:
L. Collman's colourful yet sober scheme dated 1847, which many hope
will be adopted next time round.
MICHAEL VICKERS Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
