THE EXHIBITION OF GREEK ART AT THE BURLINGTON FINE ARTS CLUB
❧ WRITTEN BY CECIL SMITH ❧
EVERY man of taste will congratulate himself that England is the seat and the refuge of the arts; and that so many genuine remains of ancient sculpture are present in our cabinets.’ So wrote James Dallaway at the beginning of last century, and, although some may think that the arts have now somewhat altered their habits, there is no doubt that this country still remains pre-eminent in the wealth of its private collections of Greek antiquities. If proof were needed, this admirable little collection would afford it. When the scheme was first mooted of a Greek exhibition at the Burlington Club, a moderate scepticism was not altogether unnatural. The former attempt in 1888 had not been exactly an enthusiastic success, and somehow the club itself appeared to be a somewhat stern soil for so tender a plant. A society of dilettanti, with grave and reverend opinions upon every conceivable form of bigotry and virtue, might be expected either to adopt an attitude of cold aloofness or to overlay its offspring with excessive and even (may one whisper it?) injudicious appreciation. But we never know where a blessing may light, and, if one may judge from the assiduous attention the exhibition has received, not only from the sternest critics of the club, but from the smart ladies of at least two capitals, a new era has dawned for Greek art; if it only lasts long enough, intrepid explorers will be found invading Bloomsbury, and the British Museum will cease to offer cool solitudes for the peaceful reflection of the philosopher and student. ¶ For the general public who have little time or inclination for long museum galleries, this sort of exhibition has much to recommend it; the intelligent public likes to have its culture prescribed for it in tabloid form—a small dose, unmistakably potent, which can be easily digested between meals. To this form of requirement the Burlington Club is admirably adapted: a single room, with just enough space for arranging a few good things. Mrs. Strong and her committee are so much to be congratulated that it seems ungracious to grumble; but personally I should have preferred to turn out about half of the less fine objects. It was difficult, no doubt; the susceptibilities of lenders are not lightly to be trifled with; but Greek art, more than most things, needs plenty of breathing space, and the exhibition would have gained by a judicious depletion. ¶ I think it was M. Piot who used to carry always in his waistcoat pocket a few of the choicest Greek coins (those being the most portable forms of the best art), as he said, ‘to correct his eye’; that was undoubtedly a true instinct. When all is said and done, Greek art will always serve as an admirable corrective—within its limits of course, for painting is obviously excluded—and that is at least some comfort in these impressionist days, when new creeds lie about like leaves in Vallombrosa. ¶ I overheard one day a visitor to this exhibition angrily resenting the suggestion that Greek art at its best could be compared for a moment with the master works of the middle ages. It is a large question, which there is no space here to argue, only I do not think it is so easily dismissed as the hasty critic supposed. I should even be prepared to stand by some of the objects here exhibited. After all, it is in many cases the same plant growing up under differing conditions of time and circumstance. Some day perhaps the club may be persuaded to try the experiment of showing side by side some of the finest parallel achievements of antiquity and the three centuries of mediaeval Europe.
PLATE I
FRAGMENT OF THE FRIEZE OF THE PARTHENON, BELONGING TO MR T. D. BOTTERELL
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PLATE II
BUST OF APHRODITE, PROBABLY BY PRAXITELES; IN THE COLLECTION OF THE LORD LECONFIELD
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PLATE III
HEAD OF A MOURNING WOMAN, BELONGING TO MR. CLAUDE PONSONBY
HEAD OF A YOUTH, BELONGING TO SIR EDGAR VINCENT, K.C.M.G., M.P.
And I am not sure that the plan might not be adopted with advantage in museums, of having a small room, like the tribuna at Florence for instance, with a florilegium of the best things of all dates; it would be both physically and mentally a boon to many a weary wayfarer. ¶ The most obvious point of comparison with the classical is the work of the classicists of north-east Italy, who, already at the end of the trecento, were beginning a formal but intelligent study of the antique. It would be instructive to see works of Donatello and John of Bologna side by side with their Greek counterparts; a Syracusan decadrachm of Kimon or Euainetos beside a medal of Pisanello or Sperandio. ¶ One bronze in the Burlington Club especially seems to challenge this comparison—the big mounted warrior (No. 53), which at first sight suggests a kind of glorified gothic aquamanile. A reviewer in the Athenaeum points out the ‘research for elegance which already characterizes this figure,’ and which he considers to mark the essential difference between the Greeks and their successors. ‘Whereas the Greek,’ he says, ‘feels most keenly the planes, to the northern and Italian artists it is the ridges that count.’ This seems to me to be a plausible generalization from imperfectly perceived facts. The world-old contrast of the ideal and the real naturally went on in Greek art as it has gone on in every other art; but less among the Greeks, because for most of their history they steadily withstood realism; they believed and acted upon Shakespeare’s ‘Nature is made better by no mean, but nature makes that mean.’ At a late period realism became too strong for them, and the Pergamene school was the beginning of the end. Surely the broad contrasting of planes is not the characteristic of a race, but of a stage of development. Obviously the sculptor in marble or wood is bound to set out by blocking out his figure in broad planes: relative development shows itself in the amount of skill which the artist exhibits in graduating and refining these planes into each other. Early Greek art shows this particularly, because it derived largely from Egyptian traditions, and was long in breaking loose from set canons. But it is none the less true of all sculpture in which an historical development can be traced. The history of Italian sculpture down to Michael Angelo is so much under classical influence that its evolution may almost be said to be an index of its information regarding Greek art. Michael Angelo unfortunately corresponds to the Pergamene stage. Already, before his day, the great Italian medallists had shown in their medal work what is probably, outside of classical times, the nearest approach to the best Greek relief, and they worked largely on Greek lines. It is not by coincidence alone that the helmeted knight on the well-known medal of Ludovico Gonzaga naturally suggests an analogy to the bronze now exhibited. In both cases the simple effect is attained by a judicious elimination, by contrasted planes, and by a skilful co-ordination into an harmonious whole. ¶ This bronze is said to have been found at Grumentum, in Lucania, a city which, as its name and its geographical position show, was never a Greek colony, though latterly a town of some importance. Probably it found its way there in the course of Corinthian traffic: the long-bodied horse, the unusual subject of a helmeted horseman, the treatment of mane and tail, are all characteristic rather of the Corinthian art of the sixth century B.C.; and we know how active the Corinthian colonists were at that period in south Italy. ¶ The same characteristic treatment is seen in the splendid bronze head from Chatsworth (No. 8). It is an Apollo rather over life size, belonging to that interesting transitional stage which immediately precedes the Parthenon. In this case, however, the archaism is partly conscious; the artist realizes the maxim peu de moyens, beaucoup d’effet, and uses it to advantage. The type chosen is that of a strong virile athlete, with hair still long, but just budding into manhood, the Βούπαις (‘bully boy’), as Furtwängler points out, of an epigram on a contemporary statue of him by Onatas. What a contrast this to the soft and dreamy Sauroktonos of the succeeding century: with its almost architectural symmetry, its vigorous subordination of all search for detail to general effect, and its mathematical balance of large lines and large planes, it seems to stand as a visible protest against weakness and effeminacy. As Emerson puts it, this one head might be the indemnification for populations of pygmies or weaklings. The step from this to the Parthenon is short in point of years, but is artistically an interval which is strongly defined, for within its limit Greek sculpture has entered into its birthright. This stage is nobly represented in the exhibition by the fragment from a slab of the north frieze of the Parthenon, reproduced in Plate I. Broken away probably at the time of the Venetian bombardment, it seems to have been acquired in Athens by Stuart, who sent it to Smyrna; a few years ago it was dug up beside a rockery in a garden in Essex; what its movements were between Smyrna and Essex is matter for conjecture. A former owner of the Essex property was a Mr. Astle, who was a trustee of the British Museum, and may be supposed to have had an interest in antiquities: habent sua fata, these flotsam relics of antiquity: this is not the only marble in the exhibition which has been excavated on English soil. The head (No. 24), which early in the seventeenth century belonged to the famous Arundel collection, was recently dug up by a navvy in London close to the Temple, on the site that was once part of the Arundel house garden. ¶ The surface of the Parthenon fragment has suffered, of course, but not so grievously as might be expected. It gives the head of one of the mounted knights of the north frieze, and the horse’s head of the figure immediately following him. The youth is from northern Greece, probably from one of the Thracian colonies of Athens, as his Thracian headdress of foxskin (the alopeke) shows. That his horse is in movement even the fragment makes clear by the light tresses of hair blown backward beneath his cap, of which the heavy tail is itself curved outward by the motion; but his eyes are intently set on his forward path, and the firm and straight yet supple poise of neck and torso bespeak his ‘magic horsemanship.’ The figure behind him (preserved in the British Museum), a squadron commander or marshal, turns partly round in his seat, checking his horse, apparently to give an order to his section; with the suddenness of the action the horse’s mouth is wrenched open and his head thrown back, the plaited forelock swings upward, and every muscle is tense; the motive is a subtle variation on the theme represented by the splendid horse’s head of Selene or Night in the eastern pediment, but with this principal difference, that while this horse is answering to its rider’s curb, the Selene horse is probably starting back of its own accord, in alarm at taking the downward plunge. Now that this beautiful fragment has found its way to London, is it too much to hope that it may make one more journey—and that its last—to Bloomsbury, and rejoin the slab to which it fits?
PLATE IV—BRONZES
SMALL BRONZES: HANDLE OF AMPHORA BELONGING TO MR. WYNDHAM COOK; MASK OF SEA DEITY BELONGING TO MR. GEORGE SALTING; PLAQUE BELONGING TO MR. H. WALLIS
APHRODITE WITH TORCH, BELONGING TO MR. J. E. TAYLOR
SICK MAN, BELONGING TO MR. WYNDHAM COOK
SEILENOS CROUCHING, BELONGING TO MR. J. E. TAYLOR
NUDE APHRODITE, BELONGING TO MR. CHARLES LOESER
PLATE V
REPOUSSÉ MIRROR-COVER; IN THE COLLECTION OF MR. J. E. TAYLOR
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From Pheidias it is natural to turn to that other sculptor who shared with him the glory of the latter part of the fifth century. Polykleitos, the leader of the Argive school, did for the physical ideal what Pheidias had done for the religious. His earliest recorded work, the statue of a boy-boxer crowning himself with a wreath, set up at Olympia about 440 B.C., has been identified in four different replicas, of which one is the head belonging to Sir Edgar Vincent (No. 45), shown on Plate III. The statue-base itself was found at Olympia in 1877, still bearing its dedicatory inscription, and with marks showing that the figure was of bronze. From a marble copy to a bronze original, and that of an artist whose bronze technique was by many considered pre-eminent in antiquity, is a far cry, but even in this head we may see some faint reflection of the genius of Polykleitos. The curved surfaces definitely meet and intersect instead of merging almost insensibly into one another, as happens in marble work. In this respect an admirable contrast is offered by the famous head of Aphrodite, belonging to Lord Leconfield, on Plate II. This head, which is in the catalogue (No. 22) boldly described as ‘an original by Praxiteles,’ in acceptation of a suggestion originally due to Payne Knight, and later adopted by Furtwängler, is undoubtedly the most beautiful Aphrodite head in this artist’s style which has come down to us. A comparison of it with that of the Olympian Hermes and with the copies of the Knidian Aphrodite makes this identification at least highly probable. The hair is apparently roughly finished and almost sketchy, but offers an admirable contrast to the highly polished surface of the flesh, and even without the colour which certainly once covered it is magically successful in its rendering of texture. The high triangular forehead-space, which gives distinction to the type and value to the setting of the eyes, is almost identical with the forehead of the Knidian Aphrodite, and also that of the Knidian Demeter, a statue certainly under strong Praxitelean influence: the slight projection over the brows, the so-called ‘bar of Michael Angelo,’ which is so marked a feature in the Hermes, is introduced here with extraordinary delicacy of effect. It is no wonder that Lucian singled out for praise in the Aphrodite of Praxiteles ‘the beautiful line of her forehead and brow, and her melting eye, full of joy and of pleasure.’ The eyes indeed are especially characteristic; their narrow opening in proportion to the length (yeux bridés), the slight projection of the lower lid, which gives an indescribable softness to the shadow beneath it, the almost imperceptible transition at the outer corner both of eye and mouth, are all traits which belong to Praxiteles alone. The oval contour is skilfully redeemed from formality by the dimple in the chin, just as the columnar neck is softened by the soft fold midway. For beneath all the refinement, which might easily become voluptuous, there is withal a physical dignity of form which bespeaks the goddess, ‘che muove il sole e l’ altre stelle.’ The artist ‘keeps the two vases, one of aether and one of pigment, at his side, and invariably uses both.’ ¶ In the presence of this masterpiece it is difficult to share the admiration which the catalogue bestows on the Head of a Girl from Chios (No. 44). The intention of the sculptor was obviously to reproduce a Praxitelean type; but whatever this head may once have been, the entire surface has been so rubbed down that it now looks like a model in partly melted loaf sugar. Under these circumstances any close study of the details is fruitless, but the characteristic features, especially the mouth, are so weakly conceived that it probably looks as pretty now, half hidden under a ‘baldacchino,’ as ever it did; its prettiness indeed seems to be its highest claim to notice.[84] ¶ The head belonging to Mr. Claude Ponsonby on Plate III has lately been claimed as Lysippean by M. Salomon Reinach. Unfortunately we know very little of the characteristic treatment of the features by Lysippos; we know that he was essentially a worker in bronze, that he introduced a more natural treatment of the hair and an animation of facial expression, and that this last qualification naturally led him into portraiture. The general outline of the eye cavities, and the form and modelling of the forehead, closely resemble those of the Alexander portrait in the British Museum; and the rendering of the hair has a certain naturalism which is also found in the Alexander: moreover there is a tragic intensity in the almost haggard eyes and parted lips which, together with the loosened tresses and the drapery covering the back of the head, certainly mark the head as the portrait of a mourning woman. Further than this perhaps we cannot go; but it is worth noting that Tatian mentions the portrait of a woman (the Praxilla) by Lysippos, which we may presume to have been something like this. Michaelis suggests that it may have belonged to ‘the statue of a mourning woman which may have served as the decoration of some sepulchral monument.’ This is probably not far from the truth; at any rate the head seems to stand midway between the conventionalized portraits of the Athenian stelae and the more realistic portraiture of the Hellenistic age, well represented in the exhibition by the busts of Menander (No. 26) and the presumed Hipponax (No. 27). ¶ The genre side of Hellenistic art is well represented in the exhibition by the large bronze statuette of Eros, a dexterous figure of a winged laughing boy rushing forward through space with outspread wings and right foot just touching the ground; Mrs. Strong justly points to the motive as an ultimate evolution from that of the Nike of Samothrace, wherein the weight of the body seems partly supported by the foot and partly by the spread wings, which serve as a counterpoise to the structure. It is quite in consonance with Hellenistic sentiment that the love-god should be shown as the victor in the sacred torch race, the Lampadephoria —Eros the unconquerable, the ἀνίκατος μάχαν, invades the palaestra and beats the athlete at his own game. ¶ When I first saw this charming figure (it was in a room at the Charing Cross Hotel, on his first arrival here) the then owner told me the circumstances of his discovery. Not far south of Vesuvius the river Sirmio finds its way to the sea; at a spot on the Pompeii side which probably in antiquity marked a ferry or ford, this statuette with other things was excavated. The presumption is that the hapless owner, fleeing from the eruption with his treasure under his arm, was overtaken here, possibly while waiting for the ferry-boat. It is a tragic little history, all the more touching somehow on account of the subject which the figure represents. ¶ In its collection of smaller bronzes the exhibition is particularly rich. A small selection is here given in Plate IV. The archaic period is represented by the little crouching or, more probably, dancing Seilenos (No. 34), the wild animalistic sprite of the woods, half bearded man and half horse, as Ionic art depicted him; by the amphora handle (No. 92) in the form of a youth bent backwards below two panthers which rested on the lip of the vase; and by the charming little Aphrodite (No. 20) whose formal drapery and pose, combined with a refinement of delicate modelling, are together characteristic of the springtime of Greek art. With her may be contrasted the tiny nude Aphrodite (No. 11) to which an ancient admirer has presented a necklace, bracelet, and anklet in gold, probably, as Mrs. Strong suggest, an adaptation of a famous statue by Praxiteles. ¶ On Plate V is a fine example of the repoussé mirror-covers which seem to have belonged exclusively to the fourth and third centuries B.C. The nearly full-grown Eros with long wings is characteristic rather of the earlier stage; otherwise the subject, in which he assists a lady or his mother at her toilet, is a favourite one for this class of representation. An unusual form of mirror support is Mr. Wallis’s plaque (No. 62), which has the design cut out à jour, as beautiful in its pale blue patina as it is in the dexterous adaptation of the composition to the space which it has to fill. The owner suggests that the reclining winged boy is Hypnos rather than Eros; if so, it is an unusual rendering of the god of sleep.
PLATE VI
(a) CARYATID FIGURE; (b) WOMAN LEANING ON PEDESTAL, BELONGING TO MR. J. E. TAYLOR; (c) DOLL, BELONGING TO MRS. MITCHELL; (d) WOMAN WITH A FAN, BELONGING TO MR. JAMES KNOWLES; (e) THE YOUNG DIONYSOS, BELONGING TO MR. J. E. TAYLOR
TERRACOTTAS
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PLATE VII
KRATER BELONGING TO HARROW SCHOOL
(a) KYLIX SIGNED BY TLESON, AND (b) PLATE SIGNED BY EPIKTETOS; IN THE COLLECTION OF THE MARQUESS OF NORTHAMPTON
The Alexandrine period is represented on Plate IV by Mr. Salting’s fine mask of a sea deity (No. 113) with inlaid eyes and marine emblems skilfully worked in, suggestive of the grotesque masks of Pompeian and cinquecento Italian art; and by Mr. Wyndham Cook’s puzzling seated statuette of an emaciated man (No. 50). This figure has usually been described as a pathological study, a votive offering to Asklepios from a sick person. The careful workmanship, however, and the fact that it is inscribed with the name of the personage represented seem to militate against this view; moreover the figure does not seem to represent actual suffering so much as austerity. The excessive emaciation, the pose, and the fixed abstracted expression appear to me to indicate rather ecstasy, the ἔκστασις of the mystic, the Pythagorean anchorite who, like the Brahmin, has learnt by mortification of the flesh to project his soul into the unseen. We know the interest that Alexander took in the Indian yogins, and that he had intended to bring one of them, Kalanos, back with him to Greece. It is not improbable that other Greeks may have taken up the idea: and it is significant that this bronze was found at Alexander’s own city of Pella and bears a Macedonian name. If this be so, it adds an extraordinary and unique interest to the little bronze. ¶ The group of terracotta statuettes on Plate VI are chosen as characteristic types of different forms of this charming art. The little doll (No. 24) made, perhaps, in imitation of a Persephone figure, but intended to have movable limbs, and the Caryatid figure (No. 26) belong to the fifth century; the latter is remarkable for its strongly Pheidian character of type and drapery, and is certainly of Attic work nearly contemporary with the Parthenon. The young Dionysos (No. 7) and the two girls (Nos. 3 and 10) are good instances of the peculiarly modern sentiment which pervaded the art as well as the literature of the Hellenistic age. These figures are the bric-à-brac of antiquity; the far-away ancestors of Dresden, and Saxe, and Watteau, with some of their coquetry and none of their artificiality. ¶ Before leaving the terracottas it is necessary to mention the large head of Zeus (No. 46) which has been added since the exhibition opened; Professor Furtwängler and Mrs. Strong consider this head to be ‘a Greek work of the great period of Pheidias.’ It is particularly unpleasant to me to find myself differing entirely from their view; after close and repeated examination I am bound to say that it seems to me to belong to a well-known class of terracottas which are now generally agreed to be of modern origin. ¶ Of the collection of vases there is only space here to include three typical specimens (Plate VII); these are the kylix signed by the artist Tleson (No. 16), with a charming drawing of two goats rearing up and butting one another above a floral ornament; a good example of the skill with which the Greek artist pressed into his service as pure decoration a common scene of daily life; the plate (No. 79), signed by Epiktetos, with its humorous ride-a-cock-horse subject, the precursor of the Parthenon horseman riding on his own fighting-cock; and the krater from Harrow School (No. 44), with its masterly composition of the hero Kaineus overwhelmed by the Centaurs. In its strong firm line, and spirited composition, which is yet kept in subordination to the decorative effect of the vase as a whole, this work stands out instinct with the combination of strength and self-control which are the leading characteristics of the best works of Hellenic art. ¶ I have already occupied so much space that the very important series of engraved gems and coins must remain almost unnoticed, and this is a pity because outside the great museums we are not likely ever to see such a series again assembled. The beautiful drawings of Greece by Cockerell, the wandering artist-scholar, one of the great builders of English artistic repute in the Levant, these too must be left with a bare mention. But this fact in itself speaks for the high standard attained by the exhibition, on which Mrs. Strong and the club are much to be congratulated.