Winchester College Collections
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Winchester College Collections WINCHESTER COLLEGE SOCIETY Spring 2012 Winchester College Collections uring its long history Winchester College has periods and styles of Greek pottery, acquired many historic and beautiful artefacts, from Mycenaean to south Italian. Dsome of national importance. The collections One of the jewels is the cup by fall broadly into two categories: material that might be the ‘Winchester Painter’, named described as Wykehamical, reflecting the life and after the vase’s present location administration of one of the oldest school foundations by the Oxford Professor, Sir John in England, and collections that have been acquired to Beazley. Very few Greek painters enhance and enrich teaching at the School. They reflect signed their names, so Beazley changes in academic fashion and focus, but in general classified some according to the provide a superb resource for the cultural education of museums where their principal vases were found. There pupils and the wider academic community. are only six other cups ascribed to this painter, and all depict athletes. Our example would have been used to Archives and Books contain wine at a symposium or drinking party and The Archives, a body of 36,000 documents dating from shows athletes exercising with jumping weights. The the foundation of the School, are unique in their centre depicts a splendid bearded satyr, one of the extent and completeness. They sit alongside the mythical followers of Dionysus, the god of wine. He Wykehamical collection of objects relating to the social carries a wine jug and ‘thyrsus’, the stick with a pine- history of the College, books by and about Old cone top with which these creatures danced. Wykehamists and an extensive photographic collection. Books have been central to the life of the School since Today the use of this collection extends beyond classical its foundation, and the Fellows’ Library is witness to studies, and the vases are an inspiration to the Art this. It contains 15,000 volumes and is one of the very department both for their form and as examples of few mediaeval libraries in England from which books applied and decorative art. have survived in situ . It is used extensively for teaching The classical collection also includes Greek and Roman purposes. coins, Roman and Etruscan miniature bronzes, and an Greece and Rome archaeologically interesting sample of bronze age pottery fragments from the Aegean island of Melos. A classical curriculum dominated by Latin and Greek has historically played an important part in Art Collections Wykehamical education. The building of the The School has a limited collection of works in oil, Memorial Buildings, or ‘Mus a¯’, in the 1890s, to mostly portraiture or topographical; these are mainly celebrate the College’s 500th anniversary, gave for hung throughout the College. Francois Lemoyne’s the first time the opportunity to acquire cultural magnificent ‘Annunciation’ (1727), donated to the artefacts specifically for the purpose of education. College by Headmaster Burton as an altar-piece for Much of the space in Mus a¯ was filled with full-scale Chapel, is currently plaster casts of Greek and Roman sculpture, only a on loan to the few of which survive. But the collection of some National Gallery. ninety Greek vases continues to support the teaching of the Classics department. Some of these were Winchester pupils bought at the time in Greece by the Rev’d Arthur benefit from a Bather, teacher, Housemaster of Hopper’s and a keen significant antiquarian. Others were acquired by donation. collection of some 360 watercolours The collection contains examples of most of the main representing most Edward Lear, The Grand Canal, of the main English Venice, 1865 watercolourists of the 18th and 19th centuries. Constable, Turner, Girtin, and Lear all appear and selective exhibitions are regularly chosen and curated by the boys. Two benefactions form the basis of this collection. First that of Harry Collison (1896-1945), who was a successful barrister and painter in his own right, exhibiting in Paris and at the Royal Academy. As Chairman of the Governors of Oundle School he became aware that the Athenian cup by the ‘Winchester Painter’ c. 510 BC Chinese Collection particularly strong in these wares, having thirty-five The Duberly collection of Chinese porcelain was examples mainly of the Ming Dynasty. A donated to the College by Major Montagu magnificent example is the 18th century Duberly and his wife in memory of their only pilgrim bottle or ‘moon flask’ depicting son, James, who was killed when the on one side two magpies perching on a Guards Chapel suffered a direct flowering plum branch and on the other a hit from a flying bomb in pair of bulbul song-birds on a cherry 1944. Between 1944 and branch. The magpie is a symbol of 1967 they assembled a happiness and the pair of bulbuls collection of some two symbolize a married couple living into old hundred pieces focusing on all age. the symbols represented in Pilgrim bottle, The Mings were succeeded traditional Chinese decoration 18th century by the Manchu dynasty, as well as the best known of whose second Emperor, the immortals, sages and scholars. Kangxi (1662-1722), was a great Other forms of decorative art are patron of the arts. It is to this represented by figures in cloisonné period that almost half of the enamel, jade, ivory and bronze. The porcelain in the collection belongs, Figure of Dong earliest pieces are Tang Dynasty Fangshuo, including a considerable number of Qianlong dynasty (618-907 AD) tomb figures. T hese figures of animals and humans include a magnificent Tang horse painted in enamel colours on the and an elegant court lady which were placed in the unglazed porcelain. tomb to ensure that the occupant was properly Duck-shaped enamel The Duberly Chinese collection incense burner, late accompanied into the afterworld. Ming dynasty has enormous value as a From the early 14th century the Chinese developed teaching resource, coinciding with a greatly blue and white porcelain, made possible by the increased interest in Chinese culture both in the import of cobalt from Persia. The collection is School and in the United Kingdom more generally. arts were not being promoted in schools at that time. owned this even before the On the suggestion of former Winchester Headmaster, Royal Hampshire County Dr Rendall, he decided to give his extensive collection Hospital had such a thing: to the College in 1940. The collection of Arthur Brooke, it may even have been a Wykehamist, was left to the College in 1954. Brooke used by them from was the nephew of Rose Barton, a well-known time to time. watercolour artist whose ‘Royal Procession leaving The Natural Buckingham Palace’ is in History the collection. Both Society benefactions were given at Fossilized Ichthyosaur specifically on the understanding that they Winchester, formed in would be available for 1870, had been the pupils to study and enthusiastically collecting enjoy. A third collection, and recording specimens the Anderson Collection, even before Science School has been on long-term loan was built in 1904. These since the 1990s. collections, from which boys regularly put together Science Collections displays, along with the In Wykehamical terms science Science Library, provide our education is relatively young, Adonis Blue butterfly pupils having been part of the curriculum (Lysandra bellargus) with in some form for only 140 years, following unique the reforms of Headmaster Ridding. From its inception opportunities to at Winchester, Science embraced the tradition of study and engage collecting and cataloguing, creating an unparalleled with all branches scientific accumulation of birds, beetles, butterflies, and areas of fossils, preserved specimens, crystals, vacuum tubes and scientific study. one of the first ever x-ray machines. Winchester College Early induction coil A Wax Model of exhibited at the Great Exhibition of 1851 and was William of well known for portrait Wykeham’s Tomb medallions and a relief of Leda and the Swan, but he Every collection has a few also became notorious as quirky elements that the possible creator of a find their way in and add wax bust of Flora to the historic value and bought by the Berlin interest of the whole. Museum in 1909 and This wax model by ascribed by them to Richard Cockle Lucas Leonardo da Vinci. A (1800-1883) is one of two talented and influential made to illustrate the artist but an incredibly sculptor’s proposals to eccentric individual, he restore the Founder’s believed his wife to be of Chantry and Tomb in the ‘fairy origin’ and built her a Cathedral and presented to the Wardens of New grotto in the garden of his unconventional house, College, Oxford and Winchester College in 1847. ‘The Tower of the Winds’. Lucas’ suggested restoration of Wykeham’s tomb, in all its historical Lucas was born in Salisbury, and began his sculptural correctness, was never carried out, but the model training as an apprentice to his uncle, a cutler, in remains as a symbol of his vision. Winchester, later studying at the Royal Academy. He Egypt The Warden’s Stables Project The Egyptian collection is small Winchester College is fortunate to have in its and mostly relates to Egyptian possession this rich collection of treasures. Over the funerary practices, with amulets, years these have been necklaces and a heart pendant stored and displayed inscribed with a quotation from in a number of the ‘Book of the Dead’. different locations. To make them more Honduras Egyptian pectoral, accessible to pupils This small collection of pottery 12th-11th century BC and to a wider public, and figurines it is the Governing was excavated on the Bay Islands Body’s wish to (40 miles off the coast of Honduras) convert the Warden’s by Lord Moyne in 1937 and stables into a fully The Warden’s Stables presented to the College by Sir functional museum – Allen Cardinall, a Wykehamist and a creative use for a beautiful mediaeval building.