Department of Ancient Classics | Some Photographs of the Casts
The rare collection of Classical casts in University College, Cork, was acquired mainly from the British Museum by the College's first Professor Latin, Bunnell Lewis (1824-1908).
Lewis was a man before his time in that he sought to make the material remains of the Classical world an integral part of a Classical education. As a student at the University of London he had, one may assume, made many a visit to the British Museum, a mere half mile down the road, where, as well as other Classical pieces, the Elgin marbles had been on display since 1817, seven years before Lewis' birth. What frustration he must have felt as a young, enthusiastic teacher in Queen's College, Cork! -- a fledgling institution without a single 3-dimensional specimen of classical art. (The bleakness may have, to some extent, been mitigated for him by the fact that the Canova casts had arrived in Cork in 1819 and probably had been on display in the Old Custom House since c.1825, as property of The Cork Institution). Early in 1855 Lewis took his first step toward acquiring objects of Classical Art for his department when he secured the formal approval of the College for the establishment of a Museum of Classical Archaeology a development which had apparently been envisaged in the Statutes from the beginning (President Robert Kane, Report 1855-6, p. 7): ‘The General Museum of the College has hitherto consisted of the collections in the several branches of Natural History, with Geology and Mineralogy, and of the Cabinet of Physical Apparatus. But as the Statutes contemplate also that the Museum should contain a collection of objects of Art and Antiquity, arrangements have been made to form, on a moderate scale, such a collection as should be especially illustrative of Classical Archaeology and History, and thereby serve for illustrating the Lectures of the Classical Professors. With this object, Mr. Lewis, Professor of Latin, has undertaken the inquiries and arrangements for procuring and organizing such a collection; and I have no doubt but that, under his zealous and enlightened supervision, it will become ultimately a highly useful and interesting department of the Museum’.
Lewis immediately wrote to the British Museum requesting a list of prices of Classical casts: this he received in early February 1859. I suspect that there were within the Council some members who were not sympathetic to the idea of spending money on things artistic or perhaps money was not available for that purpose -- at any rate no purchase was made during 1855. However during that year Lewis' Museum acquired its first exhibits in the form of a donation from the Department of Science and Art of the Board of Trade (Kane, Report 1855-6, p. 7): ‘The formation of this Museum of Classical Art and Antiquity has been promoted, in a very material degree, by a valuable donation presented to the College by the Department of Science and Art of the Board of Trade, consisting of an extensive collection of Casts, Specimens, and Drawings, illustrative of decorative art and manufactures, and of artistic design. This donation has been found highly useful to several departments of this College, especially in the School of Engineering; and a large number of illustrations of Classical Art (statues and bas-reliefs) which were thus procured will, it is expected, be found available in the formation of the new Archaeological Department of the General Museum’. (It may have been at this time that casts other than those of the British Museum were acquired.) These acquisitions I assume, were housed in the room of the West Wing where Lewis gave his lectures. I find it surprising that he does not refer to them in any of his Professorial Reports from 1855 to 59.
On May 24, 1856, the British Museum received a letter from President Kane requesting a gift of casts.
‘Sir, I have the honour on the part of the Council and Professors of Q[ueens] C[ollege] Cork to solicit the cooperation of the trustees of the British Museum in the formation of a museum of classical art and antiquities in the college for the better illustration of the lectures of the Professors of the Classical Languages and Literature…’
(British Museum Archives: Original Letters and Papers)
On June 2, 1856, the British Museum replied, stating that there were no funds available which could be applied to the purpose contemplated in Kane's letter and enclosing a second price-list. The decision to purchase was then taken, a Grant of £102 18s.7d. was approved for the Museum of Classical Archaeology and the first delivery of casts was made within a few months (Kane, Report 1856-7, p. 7): ‘The Museum of Classical Art and Archaeology, which is being formed under the special suggestion and care of Mr. Lewis, Professor of Latin, has been enriched by a collection of finely-executed electrotype copies of the most interesting Grecian, Roman, and other Gems, Medals, and Coins. There has also been obtained, under the advice of Professor Lewis, an extensive series of Casts, in plaster, of Bas Reliefs and other objects of Classical Art, made from the collections in the British Museum by permission of the Trustees, the special objects copied being selected, and the copying executed under the superintendence of Mr. G. Scharf’. (The collection of electrotype copies of coins is now (1999) on display in the Department of Ancient Classics.)
To establish how much of the Grant was spent on the casts, we must, I assume, subtract the cost of the cabinet of coin-copies mentioned by Kane (and also by Lewis in his Professorial Report, 1856-7). Let us tentatively value the cabinet at £20 0s.0d.: we are left with about £80 0s.0d. for the casts, a sum which, at 1856 prices, would have bought about 45 casts.
The excellence of these first casts may be taken as guaranteed by the fact that their preparation was supervised by George Scharf.
There were two men of this name, father and son, associated with the British Museum during the 19th century. Scharf Senior, a Bavarian lithographer, sketcher and watercolourist, is best remembered for his illustrations of a changing London between 1829 and 1850: I can find no evidence however, that he had any special interest in Classical art. On the other hand such an interest on the part of his son is amply attested.
George Scharf (Junior), later Sir George Scharf, inherited his father's artistic talents and developed them admirably. After studying under his father and winning medals from the Society of Arts, he completed his training in the Schools of the Royal Academy. Later (c.1847) some of his oil-paintings were exhibited at the same Academy. For many years he lectured on Art at Queen's College, Harley Street, London. For the great Manchester Exhibition of 1857 he was appointed Art Secretary and wrote the section on sculpture in the official record of the Exhibition (entitled The Art Treasures of the United Kingdom, J.B. Waring). In the same year he was appointed first Secretary of the recently founded National Portrait Gallery and with unwearied devotion spent the rest of his life developing that institution, being honoured in 1882 with the additional title of Director. Scharf's eminent status both as an artist and as a student of art is beyond dispute.
His interest in Archaeology, especially Classical Archaeology is no less certain. When in 1840 Charles Fellows, the archaeologist, returned to southern Asia Minor to study the ruins of Xanthus, which he had dramatically discovered two years earlier, it was Scharf, then twenty years old, whom he took with him as his draughtsman. The government expedition which was sent to Xanthus in 1843 again took Scharf along to make the drawings: these drawings are now in the British Museum. Scharf was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1852 and a corresponding member of the Archaeological Institute of Rome in 1858. When the Crystal Palace was erected at Sydenham, Scharf participated in the arrangement of the Greek, Roman and Pompeian courts and was responsible for the writing of the official descriptions of them which were issued on the opening of the building in 1854. Already he had demonstrated his detailed and varied knowledge of the Classical world by providing the illustrations for Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Rome (1847) and for Milman's Horace (1849): these were followed by illustrations for the well-known Classical Dictionaries of Sir William Smith and for Smith's History of Greece (1856) and by an important essay, ‘Characteristics of Greek Art’, which was published as a preface to Wordworth's Greece (1859). There is then abundant evidence of the high respect in which Scharf was held by Classical scholars in his day.
This was the man -- artist and scholar -- who selected some of our earliest casts and under whose guidance they were made. The cast service of the British Museum was not yet regularised in 1856, the first formatore not being appointed until 1857. The records of the service are somewhat sparse for this period and Christopher Date, the present Assistant Archivist, informs me that he cannot find a definite order from Cork. As Scharf was regularly commissioned by the Museum's Trustees to take on tasks requiring his artistic gifts, e.g. the tinting of the casts for the Rock Tombs in Lycia, it was from the Trustees that the request came to him to select and supervise the casts for Cork. It is quite probable that Scharf and Lewis got to know each other later when, as Fellows (Scharf. 1852; Lewis 1865), they both presented papers to the Society of Antiquaries but I can find no evidence that they knew each other in 1856.
(Valerie Batson, Librarian of the National Portrait Gallery, to which Scharf bequeathed his collection of note books and diaries, has checked for me his diary for 1856 and has found no reference to Lewis or indeed to Scharf's working with Classical sculpture. I have not had the opportunity to examine his correspondence in the archives of the British Museum and of the Society of Antiquaries.)
Further Grants for the Museum of Classical Archaeology were to follow: £35 10s. 0d. in 1857, £94 16s. 0d. in 1859 and £50 0s. 0d. in 1860. However the last sum was probably intended not for the purchase of casts but rather for that of some original objects from the South Kensington Museum mentioned in the Presidential Report of 1860 (p.9):
‘The formation of the Special Museum of Classical Art and Archaeology has made satisfactory progress under the care of Professor Lewis and of the Committee appointed for that purpose. The principal additions to it during the past year have been --with some minor objects. Those specimens have been selected with the kind advice and assistance of L.C. Robinson, Esq., F.S.A., of the South Kensington Museum, whose eminent knowledge of ancient art is full guarantee for their genuineness and suitability’.
- Statuette of a Philosopher in marble,
- Bust of a Girl in Carrara marble,
- Sepulchral Urn,
- Two pieces of Mosaic pavement,
- An Unguentarium in Alabaster,
- Two Terra Cotta Lamps,
- Specimens of Greek Pottery of various periods,
- Figures in Bronze,
- An antique Onyx Cameo,
- Bronze Patera, Strainer, and Strigil,
- A Speculum and a Sword;
It is possible that George Scharf supervised the making of some other casts of the Queen's College collection besides those of 1856: however his involvement with the Manchester Exhibition (1857) and his duties as Secretary of the National Portrait Gallery from 1857 onwards may have prevented his accepting further commissions from the British Museum But even if he were not associated with the post-1856 casts there would be no reason to suspect their quality, for it is certain that such work was entrusted by the British Museum only to artists of proven worth.
Lewis makes his first reference to the Museum objects in his Professorial Report for 1861-1 -- surprisingly late: even more surprising is the fact that his Greek colleague, John Ryall, does not mention them in his Reports until 1870: 14 years after acquisition.
The total expenditure on the casts in the period 1856-9 was c. £210 0s. 0d. I would estimate from an examination of the British Musem price-list for 1856 that a little over 100 casts were purchased. The investment of £210 0s. 0d. was a major one for the College. (Its value may be estimated from the fact that the tuition fee for 3 terms of Greek and Latin in 1856 was £4. 0s. 0d.: thus a four-subject course corresponding to the present Arts I would have cost £8 0s. 0d. As Professor of Latin Lewis received a salary of £250 0s. 0d. in 1856.
At about 6 a.m. on May 13, 1862, disaster struck when the West Wing, where the Museum of Classical Archaeology was housed, caught fire, ‘the roof, wood-work and much of the contents’ being destroyed. In relation to the fire Kane's Presidential Report, 1861-2 reads:
‘The valuable collection of Electro-type copies of Classical Gems and Coins and a number of specimens of Classical and Mediaeval Art, the purchase of which had been referred to in preceding Reports, were (similarly) lost.’
(Kane is probably mistaken in saying that the coin-copies were lost: see above.) In a special appendix on the fire Kane includes among the casualties ‘The greatest part of the collection of objects of Classical Art’ (p.121). (Most serious was the loss of the original objects acquired in 1860: of these, however, the vases at least must have survived the fire: probably to be identified with the vases now housed in the Archaeology Department).
It is easy to imagine the feelings of devastation that Lewis must have experienced that day in May. However, with the resilience typical of the man, he secured from the College a special Grant of £100 0s. 0d. in 1863, to enable him, no doubt, to replace the casts which had been destroyed: the size of this Grant suggests that some 50 pieces had been lost. By 1866 Lewis was again able to refer in his Professorial Reports to ‘the art collections of the College’.
The casts continued to be exhibited in the West Wing, even though the President had in 1873 appealed to Her Majesty, Queen Victoria, for funds to erect a new Museum Building in which they might be fittingly housed, together with the collections from the Museum of Natural History, Anatomy and Pathology. They were still in the West Wing in 1956 when, as an undergraduate student, I first saw them. Then c.1973, during a period of reconstruction which introduced the mezzanine floor in that Wing, they were removed to a store-room in the Maltings. Either then or later some were hung in the student restaurant. When it was discovered that those in the Maltings were deteriorating (apparently suffering some wilful injury) they were removed to the Fota store-room where a series of wooden frames was prepared for their reception: two pieces were retained in the Maltings, and subsequently accommodated in the office of the Director of the National Microelectronics Research Centre: two of those in Fota were given on loan to Richard Wood and exhibited in the hall of Fota House.
The surviving collection of about 80 pieces includes casts of reliefs, free-standing statues and architectural mouldings, their originals coming from various parts of the ancient world and ranging in date from c. 500 B.C. to c. A.D. 200.
Eleven selected pieces are illustrated here:
Department of Ancient Classics | Some Photographs of the Casts
These pages were written by the Department of Ancient Classics. The information
contained in these Web pages is, to the best of our knowledge, true and
accurate at the time of publication, and is solely for informational purposes.
University College Cork accepts no liability for any loss or damage howsoever
arising as a result of use of or reliance on this information, whether
authorised or not.