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Sir William Hamilton and the British museum
World of Museums
196
strong vested interests in the administrative expenses and so, of course, in the promotion and propagation of the idea of Droits de Suite. They are encouraging artists to bite the hands that feed them, above all the hands of that small band of enlightened beings who are prepared to take the trouble to seek out, understand and buy the works of young aspirant artists at the start of their carters. It is certainly no encouragement to such people to know that, having exercised judgement and discrimination, they or their heirs, when they come to sell, will in effect be taxed additionally by Droits de Suite. The most useful kind of patron is of course the person who buys freely and creates a public market for the works of a particular artist. The subsequent rise in his or her prices will be of far greater benefit than occasional payments under a Droits de Suite scheme. Experience has demonstrated again and again that arbitrary interference in a free market damages trade and the administrative machinery created absorbs most of the proposed benefits. Once again commercial reality may be sacrificed to an ill-conceived abstract idea that appeals more to bureaucrats than to anyone else. Even the proposed beneficiaries, the artists themselves, are very lukewarm about it, apart from the inevitable clutch of noisy studio lawyers more interested in creating positions for themselves, than in creating art. GODFREY PILKINGTON
Sir William
Hamilton
and the British
Museum
Few reputations have suffered so grievously from the wayward behaviour of wives as that of William Hamilton (1730-1803) who has the misfortune to be best known as the husband of Emma Hamilton. A grandson of the 3rd Duke of Hamilton, his mother was mistress of the Robes in the Royal Household and reputed to be the mistress of Frederick, Prince of Wales. He grew up with the future George III and after an uncongenial experience of military life (3rd Regiment of Foot Guards, 1748-58), h e married an heiress in 1758 and resigned his commission. On the succession of George III in 1760 he was appointed an Equcrry to the King, entered Parliament as MI’ for Midhurst in 1761 and was appointed Groom of the Bedchamber in 1764. His wife, Catherine nee Barlow, was a talented amateur musician, but she suffered from weak lungs and this soon necessitated a further change in Hamilton’s career. The Mediterranean climate, he was advised, would prolong her life, and in 1764 he was appointed Envoy Extraordinary at the Court of Ferdinand IV, King of the Two Sicilies, in Naples. As the son of a younger son William Hamilton could expect little financial support from his family, but long before his marriage and departure for Naples he had already made his mark as a collector of Old Master paintings, and the need to raise cf2,OOO to gain his Parliamentary seat in 1761 was probably the
World
of
Museums
1. Portrait of Sir William Hamilton, by David X 181.2 cm, National Portrait Gallery, London.
Allan, signed and dated 1775, oil on canvas, 228 Depicted in the robes of a Knight of the Order of the Bath, William Hamilton (1730-1803) is shown with a number of the objects sold by him to the British Museum in 1772 and with Vesuvius in the background. Allan painted the portrait on his own initiative as a gift to bc hung in proximity to the collection purchased from Hamilton.
immediate reason for the sale of his first collection, in February of that year. This sale included the Portrait of Juan de Pareja, by Diego Vel6zquez (now in the Metropolitan Museum, New York) and Hans Holbein the Younger’s Lady ,with a Squirrel and a Starling which was purchased by Lord Cholmondeley and
2. ‘The Hamilton Vast’, red-figure volutc-kratcr made in Apulia ~330-310 BC and attributed to the Baltimore Painter, 88.5 cm high, British Museum, London. One of the most important vases sold by Hamilton to the British Museum in 1722, Wedgwood produced replicas of it in black basalt wart.
recently sold by his descendant to the National Gallery, London. Neither were particularly high1y esteemed at the time, but Hamilton’s collecting activity was distinguished f rom the outset by the breadth of his taste and his instinctive feel for quality, aswell as a chronic shortage of funds. These he developed in Naples, as Envoy Extraordinary and from 1767 Minister Plenipotentiary. He leased the
World
of Museums
3. ‘The Portland Vase’, cobalt blue blown glass with opaque white decoration, Roman, 1st century BC, 25.4 cm high, British Museum, London. The most famous of all the objects once owned by Hamilton, it was already well-known when in the Barberini collection (1626-1782) before its purchase by Hamilton through James Byrcs. Sold by Hamilton to the Duchess of Portland in 1784 and deposited in the British Museum, it was smashed in 1845, restored, and purchased by the Museum in 1945.
Palazzo Sessa as his official residence and began his remarkably successful diplomatic career of thirty-six years at the Bourbon court, although he had never intended to stay so long. The Mediterranean air gave Catherine a new leaseof life and despite constant health worries she survived contentedly until 1782.
200
World of Museums
In the meantime, Hamilton assembled his first collection of antiquities which was purchased en bloc by Parliament in 1772 for the British Museum. Prior to then the founding collections of the British Museum (opened to the public in 1759) had consisted primarily of books, manuscripts and natural history specimens, reflecting the still strong traditions of kunst- und wtinderkammern, and the Hamilton antiquities entered the aptly-named Department of Natural and Artificial Productions. However, the size of this purchase, and the quality and range of the vases, bronzes, jewellery, metalwork, intaglios and other items, added a new dimension to the British Museum, and the impact of their acquisition is still felt today. This was not fortuitous, and the recent exhibition Vasesand Volcanoes: Siv William Hamilton and his Collection (British Museum, March-July 1996)‘: has d rawn attention to Hamilton’s broader educational ambitions and his desire “to raise public consciousness of the beneficial influence that classical antiquity in particular could provide as a model for contemporary artists and manufacturers to follow”. His particular love of Greek vases and ancient bronzes was fed by the excavations of Pompeii and their relatively modest prices, while his limited funds and lack of a permanent residence did not encourage the purchase of monumental sculpture and marbles. Hamilton’s second collection of antiquities, assembled after 1772, was broken up under difficult circumstances, though Richard Payne Knight was able to acquire the collection of over one hundred bronzes in 1791-94 (bequeathed to the British Museum in 1824 with the rest of his collections) and a major part of the rich series of cameos was purchased by his colleague, Sir Richard Worsley, then British Ambassador in Venice, in 1791 (subsequently entered the collection of the Earl of Yarborough). Some of the finest vases in the second collection were inadvertently left out of the consignment sent from Naples in H.M.S. Colossus and were subsequently sold to Henry Hope, but the majority were lost when she was wrecked off the Stilly Isles in December 1798. Apart from his official residence in the Palazzo Sessa,Hamilton enjoyed the country air at the Villa Angelica, near Portici, which was located barely three miles from the crater of Vesuvius and also served as Hamilton’s vulcanological observatory. Quiescent since the catastrophic eruption of AD 79, Vesuvius erupted again in October 1767 with considerable violence, and again in August 1779 and in 1787, while a major eruption accompanied by an earthquake in summer 1794 destroyed Torre de1 Greco with a spectacular flow of lava. Hamilton rapidly became the leading expert in Naples on volcanoes and from April 1768 sent rock specimens collected from Vesuvius and the Naples region to the British Museum and the Royal Society in London. The natural history collections of the Royal Society were presented to the British Museum in 1781, and today 122 of those specimens can be identified in the collections of the Natural History Museum, London (formerly the British Museum Natural History). Hamilton’s interest in the natural history and geology of the Naples area had been the subject of earlier communications to the Royal Society, which elected him a Fellow in 1766, and he was consulted in 1769 by the mineralogist, Rudolph Erich Raspre, concerning the volcanic origins of basalt. Hamilton “See I. Jenkins and K. Sloan, Vasej and Valcanoe~ (British Museum Press), 1996 (ISBN O-7141-1766-8).
SZI William
Hamilton
and his Collectzo~z,
London
world
of Museums
2Cl
corresponded regularly from 1777 with Joseph Banks, President of the Koyal Society from 1778, and apart from reports on the volcanic activities of the Naples area, he often sent scientific specimens, especially of fish, for inclusion in the British Museum collections. Further public recognition came in January 1772 when he was created Knight of the Bath and, in the following month, a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, with membership of the Society of Dilettanti following in 1777, but his requests for diplomatic posts in Vienna (1770) and Madrid (1775) were turned down. Although he was elected a Trustee of the British Museum in 1783, and enjoyed high esteem in Naples, his carefully cultivated reputation in London as experienced virtuoso and respected diplomat was soon shattered after the arrival of Emma Hart in 1786. The discarded mistress of Hamilton’s nephew, Charles Greville, and wished by him onto his ageing uncle, the relationship was cemented when he married her in 1791. However, in the wake of the French invasion of Italy, the scandal of her blatant love affair with Admiral Lord Nelson from September 1798, at first in Naples and Sicily but continued openly in London and Fonthill Abbey from the end of 1800, destroyed his reputation after retiring from the Diplomatic Service. Hamilton’s last years, spent mostly in London, were clouded also by deepening financial problems and the forced sales of his surviving collections. However, he remained a Trustee of the British Museum until his death, notwithstanding his earlier disappointment when the Trustees, in 1775, had turned down the Warwick Vase. He had bought it in 1772 and had hoped that it could enter the British Museum as the centrepiece of the collection purchased from him. Nonetheless, he had every reason to be proud of the growing antiquities collections of the British Museum which he had instigated and were shortly to be enriched with the Elgin Marbles, not least the major group of Egyptian scarabs from the Carafa Noia collection then taking on a new importance following Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt. Photo Credits British Museum,
London
The Institute for the Conservation Artistic Works in Ireland
of Historic
and
In March 1982, a small group of conservators met in the Joint Conservation Laboratorv of the Ulster Museum/Queen’s University of Belfast and as a result of its deliberations, the Irish Professional Conservators’ and Restorers’ Association was founded. Representing conservators from many disciplines and from all over Ireland, membership now stands at about 150, most of whom arc
196
strong vested interests in the administrative expenses and so, of course, in the promotion and propagation of the idea of Droits de Suite. They are encouraging artists to bite the hands that feed them, above all the hands of that small band of enlightened beings who are prepared to take the trouble to seek out, understand and buy the works of young aspirant artists at the start of their carters. It is certainly no encouragement to such people to know that, having exercised judgement and discrimination, they or their heirs, when they come to sell, will in effect be taxed additionally by Droits de Suite. The most useful kind of patron is of course the person who buys freely and creates a public market for the works of a particular artist. The subsequent rise in his or her prices will be of far greater benefit than occasional payments under a Droits de Suite scheme. Experience has demonstrated again and again that arbitrary interference in a free market damages trade and the administrative machinery created absorbs most of the proposed benefits. Once again commercial reality may be sacrificed to an ill-conceived abstract idea that appeals more to bureaucrats than to anyone else. Even the proposed beneficiaries, the artists themselves, are very lukewarm about it, apart from the inevitable clutch of noisy studio lawyers more interested in creating positions for themselves, than in creating art. GODFREY PILKINGTON
Sir William
Hamilton
and the British
Museum
Few reputations have suffered so grievously from the wayward behaviour of wives as that of William Hamilton (1730-1803) who has the misfortune to be best known as the husband of Emma Hamilton. A grandson of the 3rd Duke of Hamilton, his mother was mistress of the Robes in the Royal Household and reputed to be the mistress of Frederick, Prince of Wales. He grew up with the future George III and after an uncongenial experience of military life (3rd Regiment of Foot Guards, 1748-58), h e married an heiress in 1758 and resigned his commission. On the succession of George III in 1760 he was appointed an Equcrry to the King, entered Parliament as MI’ for Midhurst in 1761 and was appointed Groom of the Bedchamber in 1764. His wife, Catherine nee Barlow, was a talented amateur musician, but she suffered from weak lungs and this soon necessitated a further change in Hamilton’s career. The Mediterranean climate, he was advised, would prolong her life, and in 1764 he was appointed Envoy Extraordinary at the Court of Ferdinand IV, King of the Two Sicilies, in Naples. As the son of a younger son William Hamilton could expect little financial support from his family, but long before his marriage and departure for Naples he had already made his mark as a collector of Old Master paintings, and the need to raise cf2,OOO to gain his Parliamentary seat in 1761 was probably the
World
of
Museums
1. Portrait of Sir William Hamilton, by David X 181.2 cm, National Portrait Gallery, London.
Allan, signed and dated 1775, oil on canvas, 228 Depicted in the robes of a Knight of the Order of the Bath, William Hamilton (1730-1803) is shown with a number of the objects sold by him to the British Museum in 1772 and with Vesuvius in the background. Allan painted the portrait on his own initiative as a gift to bc hung in proximity to the collection purchased from Hamilton.
immediate reason for the sale of his first collection, in February of that year. This sale included the Portrait of Juan de Pareja, by Diego Vel6zquez (now in the Metropolitan Museum, New York) and Hans Holbein the Younger’s Lady ,with a Squirrel and a Starling which was purchased by Lord Cholmondeley and
2. ‘The Hamilton Vast’, red-figure volutc-kratcr made in Apulia ~330-310 BC and attributed to the Baltimore Painter, 88.5 cm high, British Museum, London. One of the most important vases sold by Hamilton to the British Museum in 1722, Wedgwood produced replicas of it in black basalt wart.
recently sold by his descendant to the National Gallery, London. Neither were particularly high1y esteemed at the time, but Hamilton’s collecting activity was distinguished f rom the outset by the breadth of his taste and his instinctive feel for quality, aswell as a chronic shortage of funds. These he developed in Naples, as Envoy Extraordinary and from 1767 Minister Plenipotentiary. He leased the
World
of Museums
3. ‘The Portland Vase’, cobalt blue blown glass with opaque white decoration, Roman, 1st century BC, 25.4 cm high, British Museum, London. The most famous of all the objects once owned by Hamilton, it was already well-known when in the Barberini collection (1626-1782) before its purchase by Hamilton through James Byrcs. Sold by Hamilton to the Duchess of Portland in 1784 and deposited in the British Museum, it was smashed in 1845, restored, and purchased by the Museum in 1945.
Palazzo Sessa as his official residence and began his remarkably successful diplomatic career of thirty-six years at the Bourbon court, although he had never intended to stay so long. The Mediterranean air gave Catherine a new leaseof life and despite constant health worries she survived contentedly until 1782.
200
World of Museums
In the meantime, Hamilton assembled his first collection of antiquities which was purchased en bloc by Parliament in 1772 for the British Museum. Prior to then the founding collections of the British Museum (opened to the public in 1759) had consisted primarily of books, manuscripts and natural history specimens, reflecting the still strong traditions of kunst- und wtinderkammern, and the Hamilton antiquities entered the aptly-named Department of Natural and Artificial Productions. However, the size of this purchase, and the quality and range of the vases, bronzes, jewellery, metalwork, intaglios and other items, added a new dimension to the British Museum, and the impact of their acquisition is still felt today. This was not fortuitous, and the recent exhibition Vasesand Volcanoes: Siv William Hamilton and his Collection (British Museum, March-July 1996)‘: has d rawn attention to Hamilton’s broader educational ambitions and his desire “to raise public consciousness of the beneficial influence that classical antiquity in particular could provide as a model for contemporary artists and manufacturers to follow”. His particular love of Greek vases and ancient bronzes was fed by the excavations of Pompeii and their relatively modest prices, while his limited funds and lack of a permanent residence did not encourage the purchase of monumental sculpture and marbles. Hamilton’s second collection of antiquities, assembled after 1772, was broken up under difficult circumstances, though Richard Payne Knight was able to acquire the collection of over one hundred bronzes in 1791-94 (bequeathed to the British Museum in 1824 with the rest of his collections) and a major part of the rich series of cameos was purchased by his colleague, Sir Richard Worsley, then British Ambassador in Venice, in 1791 (subsequently entered the collection of the Earl of Yarborough). Some of the finest vases in the second collection were inadvertently left out of the consignment sent from Naples in H.M.S. Colossus and were subsequently sold to Henry Hope, but the majority were lost when she was wrecked off the Stilly Isles in December 1798. Apart from his official residence in the Palazzo Sessa,Hamilton enjoyed the country air at the Villa Angelica, near Portici, which was located barely three miles from the crater of Vesuvius and also served as Hamilton’s vulcanological observatory. Quiescent since the catastrophic eruption of AD 79, Vesuvius erupted again in October 1767 with considerable violence, and again in August 1779 and in 1787, while a major eruption accompanied by an earthquake in summer 1794 destroyed Torre de1 Greco with a spectacular flow of lava. Hamilton rapidly became the leading expert in Naples on volcanoes and from April 1768 sent rock specimens collected from Vesuvius and the Naples region to the British Museum and the Royal Society in London. The natural history collections of the Royal Society were presented to the British Museum in 1781, and today 122 of those specimens can be identified in the collections of the Natural History Museum, London (formerly the British Museum Natural History). Hamilton’s interest in the natural history and geology of the Naples area had been the subject of earlier communications to the Royal Society, which elected him a Fellow in 1766, and he was consulted in 1769 by the mineralogist, Rudolph Erich Raspre, concerning the volcanic origins of basalt. Hamilton “See I. Jenkins and K. Sloan, Vasej and Valcanoe~ (British Museum Press), 1996 (ISBN O-7141-1766-8).
SZI William
Hamilton
and his Collectzo~z,
London
world
of Museums
2Cl
corresponded regularly from 1777 with Joseph Banks, President of the Koyal Society from 1778, and apart from reports on the volcanic activities of the Naples area, he often sent scientific specimens, especially of fish, for inclusion in the British Museum collections. Further public recognition came in January 1772 when he was created Knight of the Bath and, in the following month, a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, with membership of the Society of Dilettanti following in 1777, but his requests for diplomatic posts in Vienna (1770) and Madrid (1775) were turned down. Although he was elected a Trustee of the British Museum in 1783, and enjoyed high esteem in Naples, his carefully cultivated reputation in London as experienced virtuoso and respected diplomat was soon shattered after the arrival of Emma Hart in 1786. The discarded mistress of Hamilton’s nephew, Charles Greville, and wished by him onto his ageing uncle, the relationship was cemented when he married her in 1791. However, in the wake of the French invasion of Italy, the scandal of her blatant love affair with Admiral Lord Nelson from September 1798, at first in Naples and Sicily but continued openly in London and Fonthill Abbey from the end of 1800, destroyed his reputation after retiring from the Diplomatic Service. Hamilton’s last years, spent mostly in London, were clouded also by deepening financial problems and the forced sales of his surviving collections. However, he remained a Trustee of the British Museum until his death, notwithstanding his earlier disappointment when the Trustees, in 1775, had turned down the Warwick Vase. He had bought it in 1772 and had hoped that it could enter the British Museum as the centrepiece of the collection purchased from him. Nonetheless, he had every reason to be proud of the growing antiquities collections of the British Museum which he had instigated and were shortly to be enriched with the Elgin Marbles, not least the major group of Egyptian scarabs from the Carafa Noia collection then taking on a new importance following Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt. Photo Credits British Museum,
London
The Institute for the Conservation Artistic Works in Ireland
of Historic
and
In March 1982, a small group of conservators met in the Joint Conservation Laboratorv of the Ulster Museum/Queen’s University of Belfast and as a result of its deliberations, the Irish Professional Conservators’ and Restorers’ Association was founded. Representing conservators from many disciplines and from all over Ireland, membership now stands at about 150, most of whom arc