71. The Greek collection

After I wrote the blogs on Greek art and the works of Ricketts and Shannon (nos. 67, 68 and 69) I read an essay on their Greek and Roman collection in the Journal of the history of collections (vol. 24, no 3, 2012, p. 369-378). The advance access publication date of this issue of the e-journal was 19 April 2012, but through my library (the National Library of the Netherlands) access was delayed until 18 November, while the two supplementary documents are unavailable to this date. It it sometimes difficult to get access to new essays on Ricketts and Shannon, however, the author of the essay, Christina Rozeik, kindly send me the additional material, which sheds light on the acquisition history of the collection of Greek and Roman artefacts in the collection of Ricketts and Shannon that is now located in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.

Cover for All for art. The Ricketts and Shannon collection (1979)

The museum has always treated the donation as a treasure. The exhibition All for art, edited by Joseph Darracott in 1979, contained 232 objects from this collection, including Egyptian and Japanese art. Sixty objects from the Greek and Roman collection were described, which roughly equals 25% of all objects on display.

All for art. The Ricketts and Shannon collection, p. 38-39 (1979)

Another catalogue, edited by Eleni Vassilika, was published as a Fitzwilliam Museum handbook in 1998: Greek and Roman art. This book showed objects from the vast collection of the museum, including donations by other benefactors: individuals such as C.B. Marlay and institutions such as the Wellcome Trustees. Out of the 64 pieces that were presented twelve were from the Ricketts and Shannon bequest, which is 20%, more than from any other single collection, signalling the importance of the objects that were originally collected between 1898 and 1930 by Ricketts and Shannon. The book was dedicated to their memory.

Cover for Greek and Roman art (Cambridge, 1998)

Although their interest in Greek and Roman art started soon after they began to share rooms in 1886, they could not afford original artefacts right away. The first recorded acquisition is of some Tanagra statues in December 1898, when Shannon's diary attested that 'the weakest of the three cost us £35, the largest sum we have yet paid for a single thing', while Ricketts recorded that 'both our banking accounts vanished in this sale'. He added that the Tanagras 'proved forgeries and were given away'. A footnote in the article by Christina Rozeik, 'A maddening temptation', points out that an annotated copy of the sale catalogue shows that they paid nearly £57 in total. This is an amazing amount of money, as the artists were not that rich at the time, having been forced to move from their too expensive house in the Vale in 1894 to a dark and gloomy house in Beaufort Street in Richmond; however, by 1898 things were getting better and they moved to a pleasant house at 8 Spring Terrace in Richmond.

Rozeik describes the development of their collection as well as the restoration history of the collection. I will follow up on this story at a later date.

600. The Art Collection of Ricketts and Shannon

Blogpost number 600 is a contribution written by Helen Ritchie, Senior Curator Modern & Contemporary Applied Arts at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. She studied at Trinity Hall, University of Cambridge and the University of the Arts London. She joined the Fitzwilliam in 2016, and has been responsible for the exhibition Designers and Jewellery 1850-1940: Jewellery and Metalwork from The Fitzwilliam Museum (2018), writing the accompanying catalogue, and she has curated other exhibitions. In 2020, she published the article 'The Portrait Jewels of Charles Ricketts (1866-1931)' in Jewellery Studies. The Journal of The Society of Jewellery Historians (read the text online). I am very grateful to her for this blog essay about the art collection of Ricketts and Shannon.

The Art Collection of Ricketts and Shannon

Although better-known as a designer, illustrator, painter and sculptor, Charles Ricketts was not only a producer of art, but a consumer and collector of it too. Together with his partner, artist Charles Shannon, Ricketts amassed an enormous, eclectic art collection, which encompassed Classical and Egyptian antiquities, Japanese woodblock prints, ‘old master’ drawings, and works by more contemporary artists such as Rossetti and Burne-Jones. Ricketts was avid in his attendance of sales at auction houses and dealers' warehouses and had an excellent eye, making use of his formidable memory and extensive knowledge of art to pick up bargains and as-yet unattributed works. The collection mirrored the breadth of Ricketts and Shannon's interests, as recorded by Ricketts in 1900: 

Tuesday. Looked through more of those perfect prints belonging to a German, in this case in the hands of a thief who asked Bing prices for them. Bought 2: one Outamaro, & one Harunobu. I think at their best that nothing quite touches a first rate Jap print, excepting a good greek Kylix or first rate Tannagra, even the latter hardly compare, only the masterpieces of the greatest masters go beyond; picked Titians or Rembrandts or world famous frescoes.

[Charles Ricketts, diary, 30 October 1900, BL Add MS 58098] (See also Self-Portrait, 1939, p. 47]

During the 1890s, Ricketts and Shannon focused on acquiring artworks that were less popular and thus more affordable, in particular, antiquities and Japanese woodblock prints. During the first half of their lives, money was in relatively short supply and Ricketts's diary and correspondence are filled with the agonies of deciding how much to spend on artworks, whether they could afford such sums, and the unreliability of buying at auction houses. He wrote, 'I wish treasure turned up in shops and not in sale rooms' [Diary 22 February 1901, BL Add MS 58099. See also Self-Portrait, 1939, p. 54]. Friend Cecil Lewis described the 'skimping' and 'saving' that enabled Ricketts and Shannon to save up to acquire artworks, and them selling only 'with the greatest reluctance', for example, in 1929, when Ricketts sold their entire group of Persian paintings in order to raise funds for Shannon's medical care. Large-scale oil paintings were often out of reach financially, although sacrifices were made in order to acquire some, including Piero di Cosimo's 'Lapiths and Centaurs' (1500–15), purchased by Ricketts and Shannon in 1904 for £500, just after it had been refused by the Louvre (later bequeathed to the National Gallery), and Alfred Stevens's portrait of Leonard W. Collmann (1854), which was purchased for £300.

Piero di Cosimo, 'The Fight between the Lapiths and the Centaurs' (1500-15)
[Photo/Collection: National Gallery, London]
[Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International
(CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license]

Alfred Stevens, 'Leonard W. Collmann' (1854)
[Photo/Collection: The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge]
[Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International
(CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license]

Throughout their lives, the collection was displayed in their homes at Kennington Park Road, the Vale, Beaufort Street (both in Chelsea), Spring Terrace in Richmond, Lansdown House in Kensington, Townshend House in Regent's Park, and in their country retreat, the Keep at Chilham Castle, Kent. Matt Cook (see 'Further Reading' below) has written extensively on the aesthetics of the homes of Ricketts and Shannon, and how their collection brought them together, drawing on the numerous comments made by contemporary visitors, who noted the collection and its arrangement. Although many rooms were ascetic in their sparse decoration, according to Cecil Lewis, certain rooms were arranged like 'a small museum':

Egyptian antiquities, Greek vases and figurines lived in glass cases. Below were drawers full of antique beads and Chinese hair ornaments […]; there were Adam sofas and chairs, Italian side-tables, a marble torso, a bas-relief, a picture of Don Juan by Ricketts, a portrait of [the actress] Mrs Pat[rick Campbell] by Shannon… But this room was never lived in. Days would pass when it was not visited. It was open only when they received, when friends who cared to see, and would understand its rarity, were shown round. Yet it was not, like a museum, cold and detached. It was a set piece, true; but it was none the less a room. Arranged in perfect taste. 

[Cecil Lewis, 'Preface' in Self-Portrait (1939), p. ix]

Given the money, time and attention lavished on the collection, and its important role in the construction of the identities of both Ricketts and Shannon as individuals, and as a couple, it was important that plans were made for its future. Therefore, Ricketts arranged that on his and Shannon's death, most of the collection (comprising more than one thousand works) would be left to various museums. Some of the paintings were bequeathed to the National Gallery, London, and more than 300 Japanese woodblock prints, mostly collected by Shannon, were left to the British Museum under the guardianship of their friend, Laurence Binyon, who was Keeper of the Prints and Drawings Department there until 1933.

Kitagawa Utamaro, woodblock print from the series: Fujin Tewaza Juni-Ko (1790s)
[Photo/Collection: British Museum, London: 1937,0710,0.96]
[Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International
(CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license]

However, the bulk of the collection was left to The Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge, on the advice of Sydney Carlyle Cockerell (1867–1962), Director of the Fitzwilliam between 1908 and 1937. Cockerell was a great friend of Ricketts and Shannon, often borrowing works from their collection for display in the Museum and receiving 'tip offs' from Ricketts on bargains he had come across. After Ricketts's sudden death in 1931, much of the collection was lent to The Fitzwilliam and bequeathed permanently to the Museum on Shannon's death in 1937. 

In the Museum's Annual Report of 1937, the bequest is listed as follows:

Bequeathed by Charles Hazelwood Shannon, R A:

The Ricketts and Shannon Collections:

The collection of Egyptian antiquities.

The collection of Greek and Roman antiquities, including fine black- and red-figure Greek vases.

47 Classical gems.

15 paintings of the Italian, Flemish, French and English schools.

426 drawings and watercolours by old and modern masters of the Italian, Flemish, Dutch, German, Spanish, French and English schools, including fine examples by Titian, Tintoretto, Tiepolo, Rubens, Van Dyck, Rembrandt, Goya, Watteau, Rowlandson, Stevens and Burne-Jones.

A bronze head of Shannon, by Lilian T. Wells. [This is by Reginald Fairfax Wells]

68 engravings, including work by Goya, Keene and Legros.

A miniature of a child, attributed to Fragonard.

4 pieces of Italian majolica, 16th century.

A Meissen dish, c. 1765.

5 brass dishes, German, 15th century.

A piece of Persian embroidery.

41 Japanese drawings, including works by Hokusai.

A gold locket containing hair of Swinburne and Rossetti.

A satinwood side-table, English, late 18th century.

A mirror in a painted frame.

The collection of around 190 Greek and Roman antiquities included the extremely important bust of Antinous as Dionysos, unearthed from Hadrian's villa at Tivoli, but it was the drawings in particular that were praised for their quality. 

Rembrandt, 'The Supper at Emmaus' (1640-41)
[Photo/Collection: The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge]
[Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International
(CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license]

The Museum's Annual Report continues:

The bequest of Charles Shannon has greatly enriched the Department [of Pictures and Drawings] in all sections, but especially in that of old-master drawings. Titian's Jupiter and Io, Rembrandt's Christ at Emmaus, and the finest of the drawings by Rubens and Watteau are masterpieces unsurpassed in their kind. The collection also contains numerous other drawings, both by old and modern masters, of the finest quality. Among the paintings may be specially mentioned those by Nardo di Cione, Bicci di Lorenzo and Jacopo del Sellaio, Archbishop Laud from the studio of Vandyck (one of nine known versions), and the portrait of Leonard Collmann by Alfred Stevens.

Anthony van Dyck, 'Archbishop Laud' (c.1635-37)
[Photo/Collection: The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge]
[Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International
(CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license]

The collection included a range of works by nineteenth-century French artists, including Delacroix, Barye, Millet, Puvis de Chavannes and Rodin, but none of the Impressionists, whose work Ricketts detested. He was also a great admirer of some nineteenth-century English artists, especially Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Edward Burne-Jones. Ricketts acquired one of Burne-Jones's earliest large-scale pencil drawings, 'The Backgammon Players' (1861) from collector (and fellow donor to the Fitzwilliam Museum), Charles Fairfax Murray, who as Burne-Jones's first studio assistant, had been drawn into the Pre-Raphaelite circle. Burne-Jones later painted the same scene in watercolour (now in the collection of Birmingham City Museum and Art Gallery) and on a cabinet made by Philip Webb (now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York).

Edward Burne-Jones, 'The Backgammon Players' (1861)
[Photo/Collection: The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge]
[Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International
(CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license]

Rossetti’s drawing, 'Mary Magdalene at the door of Simon the Pharisee' (1858) had long been thought lost before it was rediscovered by Ricketts, who purchased it sometime before 1890.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 'Mary Magdalene at the door of Simon the Pharisee' (1858) 
[Photo/Collection: The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge]
[Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International
(CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license]

Ricketts's prodigious knowledge was widely acknowledged by his peers – he acted as art advisor to the National Gallery of Canada (1924–31) and to individuals including Sir Edmund Davis, who gave Ricketts and Shannon the Keep at Chilham Castle for life in return for the excellent advice Ricketts had given him on buying profitable pictures. In 1915, Ricketts had been offered and declined the Directorship of the National Gallery, London, a decision that he bitterly regretted, writing in his diary, 'I have been an ass' (Self-Portrait, p. 261, diary 16 June 1916). 

Ricketts was more active than Shannon in the acquisition of artworks but their collection was an entirely joint venture, the two men using conjoined ‘C’s as their collectors’ mark. The collection was at the heart of their lives, connecting their professional and artistic activity with their domestic life together at home. At the lowest point in their relationship, when it seemed that Shannon might leave Ricketts for the sculptor, Kathleen Bruce (1878–1947), Ricketts invoked their art as an important reason to stay together, exclaiming, 'And what would become of the collection?' (quoted in Michael Field’s journal, 19 October 1907). It is also a sad irony that the collection was the cause of Shannon's fall in 1929 and subsequent disability – he fell while trying to hang a picture on the stairs.

However, it is important to note that the joint nature of the collection has often been occluded in the documentation of these objects due to institutional technicalities and procedures. As Shannon was the last of the two men to die, and therefore the collection was bequeathed to museums by him as an individual, many objects appear in museum collections as 'Bequeathed by Charles Shannon, 1937', with no reference at all to Ricketts. This masks the key role that Ricketts played in piecing together the collection, and ignores the role of the importance of the collection in the construction of Ricketts's and Shannon's relationship. Given that Ricketts was particularly sensitive to this sort of detail, berating Cockerell for labelling jewels in the Fitzwilliam as having belonged to 'Misses Bradley & Cooper' instead of by their preferred singular pseudonym of Michael Field (letter from Ricketts to Cockerell, dated 6 June 1917, British Library, Add MS 52746, no. 58), it undoubtedly would have distressed him to think that his and Shannon's collection would have been similarly incorrectly credited.

Indeed, shortly after the bequest was formalized, the objects were installed in the Fitzwilliam Museum with only Shannon's name appearing on the object labels. This was noticed immediately by friends of Ricketts and Shannon. The Museum's archive contains a letter dated 24 October 1937 from Thomas Sturge Moore to then-Fitzwilliam Museum Director, L. C. G. Clarke. In it, Moore writes of Ricketts and Shannon, 'Their friendship, like their collection, was unique and they regarded its designation by their joint names as their monument.' For Ricketts and Shannon, their collection was intended to be their joint legacy, recording their partnership for posterity.

This letter, and its reply, was highlighted recently by participants in the University of Cambridge Museums' Remix programme and, read aloud in full, formed the basis of a creative response to Edmund Dulac's portrait of the pair as medieval saints, which is also in the Fitzwilliam's collection. In light of this evidence and the clarity of their wishes, it behoves Curators at the many institutions that benefitted from their generosity to ensure that both Ricketts and Shannon are credited with the creation of their unique and important art collection.

                                                                                                                Helen Ritchie

Further reading on the art collection of Ricketts and Shannon:

Stephen Calloway, ''Tout pour l'art': Charles Ricketts, Charles Shannon and the Arrangement of a collection' in The Journal of the Decorative Arts Society 1890-1940, no. 8 (1984), pp. 19–28.

Matt Cook, 'Domestic Passions: Unpacking the Homes of Charles Shannon and Charles Ricketts' in Journal of British Studies, vol. 51, no. 3 (2012), pp. 618–640.

Joseph Darracott, All for Art: The Ricketts and Shannon Collection. Cambridge , Cambridge University Press (for) Fitzwilliam Museum, 1979.

Caroline Elam, 'Piero di Cosimo and Centaurophilia in Edwardian London' in The Burlington Magazine, vol. 151, no. 1278 (2009), pp. 607–615.

Jane Munro, 'CR and Charles Shannon collectionneurs de dessins' in Catherine Monbeig Goguel (ed.), L'Artiste collectionneur de dessin II. Paris, Société du Salon de Dessin, 2007, pp. 149–60.

Christina Rozeik, '"A maddening temptation" The Ricketts and Shannon Collection of Greek and Roman Antiquities' in Journal of the History of Collections, vol. 24, no. 3 (2012), pp. 369–378.

Note

For the transcription of Ricketts's diary notes, the editor wishes to thank John Aplin.

378. Scholarly Attention for Charles Ricketts (4)

Since 2000, the number of articles about Oscar Wilde or Michael Field that mention Charles Ricketts and his designs for their books has increased. Apart from that, Ricketts himself has become a major subject for research, although these publications are usually not written for a large audience.

Everything for Art and Charles Ricketts's Mysterious Mother

Book and Theatre Design 

Since 2000, more scholars have emerged with publications about Ricketts's book design, especially in the United States. Nicholas Frankel (1962) published his Oscar Wilde's Decorated Books in 2000 (The University of Michigan Press), followed by his Masking the Text: Essays on Literature & Mediation in the 1890s in 2009 (The Rivendale Press). David Peters Corbett published 'Symbolism in British "Little magazines". The Dial (1889-[189]7), The Pageant (1896-7), and The Dome (1897-1900)' in: The Oxford Critical and Cultural History of Modernist Magazines (2009). I published several articles on Ricketts, for example on his influence as a book designer on the Dutch debate on modern book illustration in the 1890s (in the Dutch yearbook for book history, 2000), on the printing of A House of Pomegranates (a sequel to this was published by Paul Nash), in The Private Library (2005, and 2007 for the Nash article), and in 2006 The Book Collector contained my article about Rickett's designs for Osgood: 'The Revival of a Publisher's Device. Charles Ricketts and Osgood, McIlvaine & Co.'

In 2004 Oak Knoll Press published Maureen Watry's bibliography of the Vale Press. Vincent Barlow contributed an essay on Ricketts and Shannon as publisher of a formerly untraced edition of Sturge Moore's woodcuts to Studies in Illustration (2014), and I privately published a bibliography of the articles and books written by Ricketts (2015).

A younger generation approached the work of Ricketts with fresh insights. One of them is Jeremiah Mercurio who took as a subject 'Charles Ricketts' illustrations for Oscar Wilde's Poems in prose. An unrealized project' (published online, 2010). Petra Clark is another young scholar who researches Ricketts's illustrations. In 2013 she published an article on 'Bitextuality, Sexuality, and the Male Aesthete in The Dial: "Not Through an Orthodox Channel"' (English Literature in Transition, 1890-1930, 2013), which was followed in 2015 by ‘“Cleverly Drawn”. Oscar Wilde, Charles Ricketts, and the Art of the Woman’s World’ (Journal of Victorian Culture, 2015). Another scholar, Koenraad Claes, published long contributions about The Dial and The Pageant in his book The Late-Victorian Little Magazine (2018). A chapter on The Dial was included in Matthew Brinton Tildesley's thesis The Century Guild Hobby Horse and Oscar Wilde: a Study of British Little Magazines, 1884-1897 (Durham University, 2007), in which he argued that The Dial emphasised a sympathy for French art, catholicity and homosocial physicality following the anti-Puritanical writing and the ‘gospel of sensuousness’ of the Hobby Horse. Another dissertation, by Daniel Patrick Williford, devoted a chapter to the Vale Press as a producer of aesthetic books (The Aesthetic Book of Decadent Literature, 1870-1914. University of California, 2015).

An older generation still played its part. In 2007, Carl Woodring (1919-2009) published an article in Wordsworth Circle: 'Centaurs Unnaturally Fabulous'. It discussed centaurs as a motif in Rickett's paintings and book illustrations. Woodring was 87 at the time.

The other major concern of Ricketts, the theatre, was not forgotten. Scholars such as Margaret Mitchell, Lindsay Catherine Thomas, and Judith P. Shoaf published essays on the stage designs for performances by and for soldiers in France, Ricketts's Shakespeare productions, and the dolls he made for Mabel Beardsley.

Exhibitions were mounted on several occasions. An online exhibition was published in conjunction with the publication of Watry's bibliography (At the Sign of the Dial: Charles Ricketts and the Vale Press 1896-1903, Liverpool University Library). Tullie House Museum & Art Gallery showed Decadence and design. Ricketts, Shannon and their circle in 2007, while Ricketts and Shannon. A Creative Partnership was on display in 2009 at the National Portrait Gallery. Museum Meermanno in The Hague commemorated the 150th anniversary of Ricketts's birth with a show called Charles Ricketts. Between Jesus and Oscar Wilde (2016).

The last decade, some new initiatives and themes came to the fore. A new edition of some of Ricketts's main texts was published by The Rivendale Press in 2014: Everything for Art: Selected Writings, edited by Nicholas Frankel. Paul Delaney and Corine Verney solved the riddle of his mother's identity in Charles Rickett's Mysterious Mother (2016), and this blog on Ricketts and Shannon started in July 2011.

Art Collectors

Ricketts and Shannon as art collectors was the subject of some earlier studies, but since 2007 three more articles haven taken up this issue: Jane Munro wrote about them as collectors of drawings (in L’artiste collectionneur de dessin. II (2007), Caroline Elam published 'Piero di Cosimo and Centaurophilia in Edwardian London' in The Burlington Magazine (2009), filling several pages about them as art advisers and collectors with quotes from their diaries and letters, while Christina Rozeik looked at the fate of the collection they bequeathed to the Fitzwilliam Museum: '"A Maddening Temptation". The Ricketts and Shannon collection of Greek and Roman antiquities' (Journal of the History of Collections, 2012).

A new angle was found by Frederick D. King, who looked at The Pageant and its role in changing concepts of art history: Revising Art History in The Pageant (presentation at the North American Victorian Studies Association's supernumerary conference in Florence,  2017). 

Queer Domesticities

Homosexuality

Homosexuality has become a major theme. David Peters Corbett published his article 'Homosociality and Visual Knowledge in the Circle of Charles Ricketts' in Visual Culture in Britain (2007), and two other writers connected this topic with that of interior design: John Potvin wrote 'The Aesthetics of Community: Queer Interiors and the Desire for Intimacy' for the monograph Rethinking the Interior c. 1867-1896. Aestheticism and Arts and Crafts (2010), and Matt Cook devoted a chapter to Ricketts and Shannon in his book Queer Domesticities. Homosexuality and Home Life in Twentieth-Century London (2014). This chapter, 'Domestic Passions: Unpacking the Homes of Charles Shannon and Charles Ricketts' was previously published in the Journal of British Studies (2012).

What will the future bring?

16. Head in obsidian

The art collection of Charles Ricketts and his partner Charles Shannon contained more than a thousand items, including paintings, Egyptian, Persian, Greek, and Roman objects, as well as hundreds of English drawings and Japanese prints, which were documented in Joseph Darracott's catalogue All for Art (1979). Among the Egyptian artifacts were jars, vases, boxes, jewellery, gaming pieces, statuettes, such as the head of a woman in painted pink limestone (72 mm) from around 2490 BC.

Ricketts wrote about Egyptian art, though not about objects from his own collection, in four, previously unrecorded articles, that appeared in The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology in 1917 and 1918. Before I will quote the first article in full, I will list the four items, which were all illustrated with black and white plates:

1. 'Head of Amenemmēs III in Obsidian: from the Collection of the Rev. W. MacGregor, Tamworth', in: The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, 4 (1917) 2/3 (April-July), p. 71-73.
2. 'Head in Serpentine of Amenemmēs III in the Possession of Oscar Raphael, Esq.', in: The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, 4 (1917) 4 (October), p. 211-212.
3. 'Bas-Relief Figure of a King of the Ptolemaic Period in Blue Faience', in: The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, 5 (1918) 2 (April), p. 77-78.
4. 'Two Faience Chalices at Eton College from the Collection of the Late Major W.J. Myers', in: The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, 5 (1918) 3 (July), p. 145-147.

Head of Amenemmēs III (or Amenemhat III) from the Journal of Egyptian archaeology (1917)

Head of Amenemmēs III in Obsidian. From the Collection of the Rev. W. MacGregor, Tamworth. By Charles Ricketts

It is a common tendency among students of Egyptian Art to praise the superb creations of the Memphite epoch to the detriment of all that came afterwards and to view the huge space of succeeding centuries as a period of artistic immobility or decline. If the first six Dynasties are illustrated by many works which, in their kind, have remained unsurpassed, the craftsmen of the Twelfth Dynasty carved portraits of a yet more introspective or imaginative cast than heretofore; with the Eighteenth Dynasty Egyptian art made new experiments, both in aim and in modes of expression, each of these subsequent phases being marked by technical developments needed by the aim to be achieved; for centuries Egyptian architecture was to develop in magnificence, resource and even in invention to the very sunset of its time, while in the Saitic revivals - possibly in the old Theban workshops - a series of realistic portraits (such as the Mentemhēt, Taracos and Nesptah) were destined to rival in power of characterization and intense inner life the finest works of the past. It is doubtless the rugged force shown in these works dating from the Twenty-fifth Dynasty which has led Hedwig Fechheimer (Die Plastik der Aegypter, p. 46) to place the superb obsidian head from the fine collection of the Rev. W. MacGregor at Tamworth among these later masterpieces of Egyptian sculpture, instead of classing it in the singularly fine series of portraits which have come down to us of the great Pharaoh Amenemmēs III of the Twelfth Dynasty, among which it is one of the best both in artistic merit and iconographic interest.

Contrary to the impression conveyed by the reproduction, this admirable work is not life-size but 130 millimetres from top of head to chin; a few breakages have affected both ears, thereby lessening what seems to have been a characteristic of the Twelfth Dynasty Pharaohs, namely ears of huge size, placed high and very projecting. One of the elements of interest in this relic of one of the finest epochs of Egyptian art lies in the fact that the king is represented as an older man than in all but one other monument - that from the Karnak cache now at Cairo; the expression is more pensive or less energetic than usual in his portraits; and the general resemblance to his father Sesostris III is so marked as to give rise to some hesitation in identifying it, though this hesitation is dispelled on closer examination, the nose and jaw being fuller or more massive than in the three granite statues of Sesostris III in the British Museum and the magnificent portrait from Karnak now at Cairo.

A severe and brooding expression marks all the portraits of Amenemmēs III, who was a ruler, warrior and builder in a family which had numbered warriors, rulers and thinkers before him. To his reign belongs the yet extant wall of El Kab; he was, in legend at least, the maker of the great Lake Mœris and the Labyrinth, and reigned for some forty-eight years powerful and prosperous. Yet on all his energetic effigies is cast a shadow as of one who had lived to see the extinction of some great hope, or the dawn of some great threat; it is doubtless a mere idle flight of romantic fancy to believe that he noted the first mutterings of the storm before the downward rush of the Hyksos invasion which, some years after his death, was to overwhelm his kingdom and whose forgotten princes were to carve their obscure names upon his very statues and royal sphinxes. Even in the studied simplicity and austerity of his seated effigy at Cairo, where he is represented in the flower of youth and with a sweeter cast of face than is his wont, he seems to brood upon some bitter thought of his ancestor Amenemmēs I, upon the illusions of kingship and the loyalty of men: "Know not a friend nor make for thyself intimates, wherein there is no end."

In the small statue at Petrograd and three other portraits at Cairo his expression is leonine and ardent; he is more grave and austere in the admirable granite statue in Berlin. In the superb "Hyksos-Sphinxes" his glance is thrown upwards and is more tense; the best preserved of these sphinxes ranks in the successful rendering of superhuman power and majesty with the great Khephren, and is unsurpassed in the art of Egypt or any other country.*

A head, in schist, preserved in Berlin, represents the king grown thinner and older, the general aspect being more marked and more sparse and very like his father. The resemblance of the profile of this important fragment to the Tamworth head is very great, yet in this last I believe the king is older still, the eyebrows project and are insisted on by the sculptor, the glance has become more sedate; it is, however, without the heavy furrows and a sort of sullenness of the least artistic of his monuments, namely the walking figure from the Karnak cache now at Cairo, which probably represents him as a yet older man.

The British Museum owns a superb Colossus in grey granite which has been tentatively described as Amenemmēs III. This, like the fine fragments in the same material from Bubastis (now at Cairo), would seem to represent some other king of the Twelfth Dynasty. There is undoubtedly a great resemblance to him in the construction of the head, but something less noble and less energetic in expression and implied character. Is this his son Amenemmēs IV or some later prince? A marked resemblance to Amenemmēs III is shown, also, in the older of the two princes in the striking group at Cairo known as "Les Deux Statues Jumelles"; these figures have been tentatively described as Neferhotep I and Sebkhotep III, who may after all have usurped an earlier work representing Amenemmēs III and one of his sons. We are here in the field of pure conjecture. 

* Hyksos Sphinxes. The interesting suggestion has been made that the sphinxes of Amenemmēs III generally known as the Hyksos-Sphinxes do not represent him but are, in fact, masterpieces of the Old Kingdom. Even during the Twelfth Dynasty research was made into the past for the form of the gods, and some such "archaizing" aim may have been deliberately adopted for the mythical shape of these composite creations in which realism and formality are in such perfect balance. Against all ascription to an earlier epoch counts their great resemblance to Amenemmēs III, and more significant still is the fact that the facial modelling shows the conscious study of the inner structure and renders bone, cartilage etc. This is new in Egyptian Art, for the startling realism of earlier masterpieces is based upon outward appearance only; even the face surfaces of the Khephren, Mycerinus and Ranofer are of one substance throughout: there is, in fact, between works of the old Empire and the finest portraits of the Twelfth Dynasty that difference which exists between the finest or most realistic French Gothic statues and any head by Donatello or Verrocchio; the character of the realism is different and the sense of plane unlike. 

Ricketts wrote about this head of Amenemmēs III (usually spelled Amenemhat III) in 1917. MacGregor's collection was sold at auction by Sotheby, Wilkinson & Hodge on 6 July 1922, when the New York Times reported that the head from the collection of William MacGregor had been sold to A.S. Harris for £10,000, and although the paper did not quote Ricketts's article, referring instead to the Egyptologist prof. Sherberry, who described it as 'a masterpiece that has not been surpassed by any sculptor of any country or age', we may recognize Ricketts's opinion in his words.

741. Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum: Ricketts and Shannon Collection

In 1936, a fascicule in the ongoing series Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum appeared: Great Britain, Fascicule 11, Cambridge, Fascicule 2. Winifred Lamb was the author of this section that contained descriptions and illustrations of objects from the collection of Ricketts and Shannon. At the time the collection was deposited on loan in the Fitzwilliam Museum. Although Shannon was still alive, he could no longer answer questions about the objects, and it must be assumed that the notes on the purchases (which had been passed on to the author through J.D. Beazley) came from Shannon's immediate circle, or perhaps were notes made by Ricketts himself.

The detailed descriptions are much more extensive than those in the catalogue All of Art from 1979 (which contains mostly small black-and-white photographs of the objects) or those in Greek and Roman Art from 1998 (which contains colour illustrations). That latest edition (written by Eleni Vassilika and with photographs by Andrew Morris and Andrew Norman) includes, for example, a description entitled 'A Labour of Theseus' which discusses a red-figure neck amphora (34 by 22.4 cm) from the period 480 to 470 BC.

Neck-Amphora

[Photograph copyright ©Fitzwilliam Museum:

Creative Commons Attribution licence (CC BY-NC-ND]

The collection website of the museum contains more similar images, which can freely be downloaded (see the website: 'Neck-Amphora'). Vassilika mentions the possible painter of the vase, the so-called Pig Painter. This name is not used in the online description, but corresponds to that in Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum, plate X, 2 (p. 58). The description on the website is factual and brief and does not discuss the images on the vase.

Vassilika's description on the other hand is not overly detailed, but highly informative and composed as an exciting narrative about the events depicted on the vase. As we would expect from an academic publication, the description in the CVA is extremely detailed, with an extensive description of the image, but without any context or explanation.

The beginning reads as follows:

Theseus advances  to kill Prokrustus with an axe. His sword is slung  in a scabbard from his shoulder. Prokrustus, wounded in head and arm-pit, tries to defend himself with a stone and  supports himself with his left hand as he sinks  down onto a rock. Above hangs Theseus' cloak.

CVA is online, and the black and white images of this vase and others from the Ricketts and Shannon collection can be consulted online: the item has the rather long title: 206466, ATHENIAN, LONDON, RICKETTS-SHANNON, CAMBRIDGE, FITZWILLIAM MUSEUM, CAMBRIDGE, FITZWILLIAM MUSEUM, GR22.1937. The online CVA gives 35 results for 'Ricketts', while the original 1936 fascicule contains descriptions of over fifty objects; they are probably all there but not all included in the search.

However, the long text in the fascicule has not been included in the online description. For that one has to find the 'Index of Fascicules by City' elsewhere on the website (follow this link), and click on the 'Browse Text' button behind the title of the fascicule. The Ricketts and Shannon fascicule can be consulted here: Cambridge Fascicule 2. The entire website is aimed at scholars and students with considerable stamina, not at casual visitors looking for items from the Ricketts and Shannon collections.

That's fine, of course, but in the meantime, the descriptions on the museum's own website remain somewhat sparse – and I know that projects like this require an insane amount of time and money, but one can always keep dreaming.

797. Bequeathed by C.S. Ricketts and C.H. Shannon

The donations of the collections of Ricketts and Shannon to various museums have led to the publication of several catalogues, in which their treasures are featured, accompanied by the following note: 'Bequeathed by C.S. Ricketts and C.H. Shannon'.

One of those was the subject of blog 71 The Greek Collection: Greek and Roman Art, edited by Elini Vassilika, published by Fitzwilliam Museum in 1998.

Another one was issued by The British Museum in 1964: Harunobu and his Age. The Development of Colour Printing in Japan by D.B. Waterhouse.

The introduction by Basil Gray, Keeper of Oriental Antiquities, describes the significance of the various collectors who have enriched the museum’s collection: 

In 1937 the Museum, which already had a fine collection of Ukiyoe prints, had received as a bequest the large collection of prints by Harunobu [...] , which had been formed by the artists Charles Ricketts and Charles Haslewood Shannon, who had a special delight in his work. In 1938 several calendar prints for the years 1765 and 1766 were presented by Mr. Tuke. [...] The bequest by Oscar Raphael of his choice collection of prints received in 1945 added several famous compositions, and another was bequeathed by Morton H. Sands in 1950.

The exhibition featured 123 prints by thirty artists (in addition, a series of books was on display, the provenance of which was generally not stated).

The prints came from the following collections:

Purchase by the British Museum: 46

Morrison Collection [Arthur Morrison, 1863-1945]: 17

Oscar Raphael Bequest [Oscar Raphael, 1874-1941]: 12

Ricketts and Shannon Collection: 11

Presented by E.W. Tuke/Tuke Collection [Samuel Tuke, 1855-1938]: 11

Presented by R.N. Shaw [Richard Norman Shaw, 1831-1912]: 9

Presented by the National Art Collections Fund: 6

Bacon Collection [Hickman Bacon, 1855-1945]: 3
Morto Sands Bequest [Morton Sands, 1884-1959]: 2

Satow Collection [Ernest Mason Satow, 1843-1929]: 2

Presented by Henry Bergen [1873-1950]: 1

Presented by Mrs Armytage Creyke [Everilda Armytage, born Creyke]: 1 

Presented by Miss Ada Mocatta [1859?-1946?]: 1 
Mrs. R.H. Philipson [fl. 1930]: 1 

There were fifty prints by Harunobu, ten of which came from the collection of Ricketts and Shannon. The eleventh object from their collection was an unsigned print attributed to Isoda Koryusai.

Isoda Koryusai, Two Girls Feeding Carp (woodblock print, c.1770)

[The British Museum: 1937,0710,0.50]

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