i THE WARWICK VASE AND BRITISH NOSTALGIA ____________________________________________ A Thesis Presented to The Faculty of the Department of Art History University of Houston ___________________________________________ In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Art of Art History __________________________________________ By Casey Kane Monahan May, 2014 ii THE WARWICK VASE AND BRITISH NOSTALGIA ______________________________ Casey Kane Monahan APPROVED: ______________________________ Rex Koontz, Ph.D. Committee Chair ______________________________ Rodney Nevitt, Ph.D. ______________________________ Luisa Orto, Ph.D. __________________________________________ John W. Roberts, Ph.D. Dean, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences Department of English iii THE WARWICK VASE AND BRITISH NOSTALGIA _____________________________________ An Abstract of a Thesis Presented to The Faculty of the Department of Art History University of Houston ___________________________________ In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts of Art History ____________________________________ By Casey Kane Monahan May 2014 iv Abstract After The Warwick Vase’s “creation” between 1771 and 1774, the form of the ancient- Neoclassical hybrid object was highly replicated in the decorative arts throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. In particular, the British population demanded the form used in both shape and decoration to create an entire class of objects including, but not limited to, presentation vases, trophy cups, garden pots, as well as tea and dinner services. Why did this fantasy object invade the English domestic sphere? I intend to argue that the presence of art objects referencing The Warwick Vase in the homes of the British elite were a visual symbol of nostalgia for the upper class’s earlier dominance, in a time when their power and status was in decline. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 1 Chapter 1: The Regency and the Vase 16 Chapter 2: Empire and Turmoil: 1840-1890 37 Chapter 3: Edwardians and Nostalgia 48 Conclusion 58 Appendix 66 Bibliography 76 Monahan 1 Introduction “‘...had the Emperor Bonaparte been successful in conquering England…the first note in his pocket-book was to possess himself of the marble vase at Warwick.’”1 What was this object that the determined and fabled French Emperor lusted after? A grand, marble construction, part-ancient, part-modern, fabricated into the form of a vase designed by the great Giovanni Battista Piranesi, known as the Warwick Vase. The Warwick Vase (figure 1) is comprised of six sections: bowl, stem, base, and three-part pedestal. The Carrara marble object is quite large, weighing eight and a quarter tons, and standing 2.94 meters tall.2 The bowl of the vase features bacchanalian imagery; on one side, a head depicting Bacchus, one of Silenus, a companion god, wearing a crown made from a grape vine and grapes. The relief also includes two heads depicting followers of Bacchus: one is a head with a wreath of ivy and berries, the other is a head with leaves and pinecones. Additionally, a thyrsus and pedum appear, signifying fertility and traditionally associated with Pan, both of which are related to Bacchus. The other side looks remarkably similar, but upon closer inspection the middle figures are not identical; instead, Ariadne and Bacchus take center stage. Both sides feature a lion pelt, which is also imagery associated with Bacchus. The vase also features large vine-stem handles with bunches of grapes hanging down. 3 The four sided pedestal features a square base with an inscription referencing its restoration. Very little of this is 1 David Udy, quoted in “Piranesi’s ‘Vasi’, The English Silversmith and His Patrons,” The Burlington 2 Richard Marks and Brian JR Blench, The Warwick Vase (Glasgow: Civic Press, 1979), 9. 3 Ibid, 9-13. Monahan 2 original: most of the piece dates to the eighteenth century. Beginning in the sixteenth century, and reaching an apex in the mid-eighteenth century, Europeans, and in particular, the British,4 were infatuated with the study of the ancient world and the objects that remained from it. In the eighteenth century, “antiquities were hunted, excavated, purchased, collected, viewed, studied, and also, particularly in Rome, copied and restored.”5 Driven by this exhaustive relationship with the ancient world, antiquarian societies sprung up in Europe; in particular, the British interest in the study of the ancient became more and more popular over the course of the eighteenth-century.6 There was a unique relationship between the British and the Italians in the period, and the cultural exchange that existed: “for the British, Rome was the present as well as the past, the slippage between them being continuous.”7 The British were able to appropriate the ruins as their own: “Rome, ancient and papal, provided both positive and negative models for the construction of national identity based on a cosmopolitan, imperial and spiritually universalizing model.”8 Figures from the past, such as Cicero, were important in terms of elitism and political rhetoric: “familiarity with Ciceronian legal arguments and bon mots was essential for success in the public sphere, above all in Parliament.”9 Much of this knowledge was derived from a particularly 4 Ilaria Bignamini and Clare Hornsby, Digging and Dealing in Eighteenth-Century Rome, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010, 2. 5 Ilaria Bignamini, “Antiquaries and antiquarian societies,” Grove Art Online, Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com:80/subscriber/article/grove/art/T003248 (accessed September 30, 2013). 6 Ibid. 7 David R. Marshall and Karin Wolfe, “Roma Britannica,” in Roma Britannica: Art Patronage and Cultural Exchange in Eighteenth-Century Rome, ed. David R. Marshall, Susan Russell, and Karin Wolfe (London: The British School at Rome, 2011), 5. 8 Christopher M.S. Johns, “Visual Culture and the Triumph of Cosmopolitanism in Eighteenth-century Rome,” in Roma Britannica, 14. 9 Johns, “Visual Culture and the Triumph of Cosmopolitanism in Eighteenth-century Rome,” in Roma Britannica, 15. Monahan 3 British institution, the Grand Tour.10 The Grand Tour, which was popular among the British elite, was a way for noble gentlemen to explore the world.11 According to one of the many guidebooks written for young men making journeys across the continent, the Grand Tour instilled “nobler ideas, more moral virtue…he shall be a more ingenious and a better man.”12 In particular, “the British sought yet more passionately the sources of that broader Classical culture in which they had been steeped, and whose glories they sought to recreate.”13 The Grand Tour’s popularity only increased as Britain conquered lands in the first half of the eighteenth century14: the relationship and lineage with the ancient Roman past became associated with successful conquering and the glory of a nation on top. There was an “unspoken, but none the less firmly-held, belief, the Britons, not Italians, were the truer and more worthy successors to the grandeur that was Rome.”15 As British gentlemen spent time in Italy, they were really spending time with what they believed to be their empire’s grand past. Many of these men returned to the home nation as antiquarians, well versed in the rhetoric of the ancient world for the purpose of the modern empire. There was a “genuine admiration for antique statuary and the fervent desire to build collections of it for both domestic pleasure and public edification.”16 Piranesi was one of the most prominent figures in this eighteenth century world of antiquarianism; an artist who famously etched both capricci scenes inspired by ancient 10 Ibid. 11John Reeve, “Grand Tour,” Grove Art Online, Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com: 80/subscriber/article/gorve/art/T034048 (accessed September 30, 2013). 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid. 14 Christopher M.S. Johns, “Visual Culture and the Triumph of Cosmopolitanism in Eighteenth-century Rome” in Roma Britannica, 14. 15 Ibid, 14-15. 16 Ibid, 18. Monahan 4 objects as well as actual Roman architectural elements and ruins. Piranesi’s “workshop was a centre for the production of artefacts in the classical architectural vocabulary.”17 Key is the concept of “production”: “Piranesi was ‘Cavalier Pasticci’, whose creations were to be found in many great house in Europe, but creations they were, not ancient sculptures carefully or thoughtfully - even if erroneously - restored,”18 much like his capricci. Piranesi published Vasi, candelabra…ed antichi in 1778, which was widely disseminated to the European public in the period, and in particular, many of the plates of the volume were dedicated to the British patrons.19 The text features drawings of notable ancient objects, but also includes drawings of vases that Piranesi himself “created,” with various fragments he excavated.20 One of these composite objects, designed by Piranesi, is the Warwick Vase (figure 2). The fantasy object was created using a group of 24 ancient fragments found by the Scottish painter, and self-described “cavatore (digger) and a negoziante (dealer),”21 Gavin Hamilton at “Pantanello, on the northern boundary of Hadrian’s Villa at Tivoli.”22 The property that the fragments were discovered on is considered one was “granted the license for excavations in 1769, a year in which some historians believe “marks the real beginning of the British conquest”23 of Italy’s ruins. At the time, Gavin Hamilton was working with Piranesi on the dissemination of the antiquities. Piranesi seems to have taken the fragments and subsequently sold them, and the design for the Warwick Vase, to 17 Bignamini and Hornsby, Digging and Dealing, 318. 18 Ibid, 319. 19 Thorsten Opper, “Glory of Rome restored,” The British Museum Magazine (2005): 29. 20 Udy, “Piranesi’s ‘Vasi’, The English Silversmith and His Patrons,”830. 21 Bignamini and Hornsby, Digging and Dealing, 10. 22 Bent Sørensen, “Piranesi, Grandjacquet and the Warwick Vase,” The Burlington Magazine 145, no. 1208, Art in Italy (November 2003): 792. 23 Bignamini and Hornsby, Digging and Dealing, 9.