NATIONALISM AND CLASSICISM - Springer978-0-230-37268... · 2017-08-28 · Nationalism and Classicism The Classical Body as National Symbol in Nineteenth-Century England and France

NATIONALISM AND CLASSICISM

Nationalism and Classicism The Classical Body as National Symbol in Nineteenth-Century England and France

Athena S. Leoussi Lecturer in Sociology University of Reading

ffi

First published in Great Britain 1998 by

MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978-1-349-40139-0 ISBN 978-0-230-37268-9 (eBook)

DOI 10.1057/9780230372689

First published in the United States of America 1998 by

ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC., Scholarly and Reference Division, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010

ISBN 978-0-312-17776-8

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Leoussi, Athena S., 1959-Nationalism and classicism : the classical body as national symbol in nineteenth-century England and France I Athena S. Leoussi. p. em. Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-312-17776-8 (cloth)

I. Neoclassicism (Art}-England. 2. Nationalism and art-England­-History-19th century. 3. Neoclassicism (Art)-France. 4. Nationalism and art-France-History-19th century. 5. Mythology. Greek, in art. 6. Art. Greek-Influence. 7. Allegories. I. Title. N6767.5.N45L46 1998 709'.42'09034--dc21 97-18289

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© Athena S. Leoussi 1998

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This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 07 06 05 04 03 02 01

3 2 I 00 99 98

For my parents, Elizabeth and Sotirios Leoussis, and in memoriam Doula Mouriki

Contents

List of Tables viii

List of Graphs x

List of Plates xi

Foreword by Anthony D. Smith xiv

Acknowledgements xvi

Introduction xviii

PART I Physical Anthropology and Ethnographic Art 1

1 Physical Anthropology and the Greek Ideal 3

2 Positivism and Realist Aesthetics 25

3 The Making of the Artist-Anthropologist 35

4 Hellenism and Ethnographic Art 56

PART II Physical Anthropology, Religion and Nationalism 85

5 The Greek Body and Christian Thought 87

6 The National Significance of Physical Anthropology 108

PART III The Classical Revival in English and French Art 131

7 Images of Greeks as Images of God 133

8 Images of Greece as Images of England 157

9 Images of Greece as Images of France 180

Conclusion 200

Notes 203

Bibliography 242

Index 253

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List of Tables

4.1 List of sample years, 1833-80 64 4.2 Works of art exhibited in the Salon in absolute numbers,

1833-80 65 4.3 Works on foreign subjects in the Salon in numbers and

percentages in selected years, 1833-80 65 4.4 National categories in the Salon and their scores

in selected years, 1833-80 66 4.5 Works on European and non-European subjects in the Salon

in selected years, in numbers and percentages, 1833-80 67 4.6 Annual rates of the major national categories in the Salon

in selected years calculated in relation to all works on foreign subjects in each year, 1833-80 67

4.7 Works of art exhibited in the RA in absolute numbers, 1833-80 68

4.8 Comparative table of ethnographic art in the Salon and the RA in selected years, in numbers and percentages, 1833-80 68

4.9 National categories in the RA and their scores in selected years, 1833-80 70

4.10 Works on European and non-European subjects in the RA in selected years, in numbers and percentages, 1833-80 71

4.11 Comparative table of the major national categories and their rank in the Salon and the RA for the period 1833-80 72

4.12 Annual rates of the major national categories in the RA in selected years, 1833-80 73

4.13 Distribution of 'Greek' works among different categories of subject matter in the Salon in selected years, in absolute numbers, 1833-80 76

4.14 Rates of different Greek subjects in the Salon in selected years, 1833-80 77

4.15 Distribution of works among different Greek subjects in the RA in selected years, in absolute numbers, 1833-80 79

4.16 Rates of the different Greek subjects in the RA in selected years, calculated in relation to all works on Greek subjects exhibited each year, 1833-80 80

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List of Tables IX

4.17 Comparative table of the rank of each of the different Greek subjects found in the RA and the Salon with its overall rate as a proportion of all works on Greek subjects exhibited in each venue between 1833 and 1880 (all calculations are based on the sampled years) 81

4.18 Comparative table of the rank of each of the different Greek subjects found in the RA and the Salon with its overall score for the period 1833-80 81

7.1 Comparative table of works on the most frequently appearing male personages from Greek mythology in the RA and the Salon, in numbers and percentages, 1833-80 149

7.2 Male mythological personages in the RA by decade, 1834-79 149

8.1 Works on ancient Greek political personages in the RA divided into historical and mythical personages, in absolute numbers, 1833-80 166

8.2 Works on ancient Greek political personages in the RA divided into male and female personages and presented in absolute numbers, 1833-80 168

9.1 Images of ancient Greek city-states in French art in absolute numbers, 1833-80 181

9.2 Comparative table of works on ancient Greek athletes by artist and medium in the RA and the Salon, in absolute numbers, 1833-80 186

9.3 Works on ancient Greek political personages in the Salon divided into historical and mythical personages, in absolute numbers, 1833-80 190

9.4 Works on ancient Greek historical political personages in French art in absolute numbers, 1833-80 198

List of Graphs

4.1 Ethnographic art in the Royal Academy and the Salon as percentages of the total exhibits in each year, 1833-80 69

4.2 Comparison of the patterns of the annual rates of the major five national categories in the Salon and the RA as percentages of all works on foreign subjects in each year, 1833-80 73

4.3 Pattern of works on Greek subjects in the RA as percentages of all works on foreign subjects, 1833-80 82

4.4 Pattern of works on Greek subjects in the Salon as percentages of all works on foreign subjects, 1833-80 83

4.5 Comparison of the patterns of distribution of works on Greek subjects among the different genres in the Salon and RA, 1833-80 84

7.1 Pattern of works on Greek mythology in the Salon and the RA, 1833-80 (percentages are calculated in relation to all works on Greek subjects exhibited each year) 133

7.2 Comparison of the patterns of works on 'Venus-Bacchus' and on 'Paganism' in the Salon as percentages of all works on Greek subjects in each year, 1833-80 134

7.3 Comparison of the patterns of works on different types of mythological subjects in the RA as percentages of all works on Greek subjects in each year, 1833-80 142

8.1 Pattern of works on Greek subjects in the RA as percentages of all works on foreign subjects, 1833-80 157

8.2 Pattern of works on ancient Greek political subjects in the RA as percentages of all works on Greek subjects in each year, 1833-80 164

9.1 Pattern of works on ancient Greek political subjects in the Salon as percentages of all works on Greek subjects in each year, 1833-80 189

x

List of Plates

1. The Greek oval and perpendicular skull compared with the elongated skull of a Peruvian (ill. in Prichard, 1836, vol. I, Figs 1 and 2)

2. Camper's classification of the human races by measuring the 'facial angle' illustrated in Robert Knox's manual of artistic anatomy (1852)

3. The body of the ancient Greeks: the hero, the woman and the athlete (ill. in Knox's Manual of Artistic Anatomy, 1852)

4. Diadumenos, Polycletus, c.440-430 BC, Roman copy, National Museum, Athens

5. The perfect man: Polycletus' young Greek athlete decorating himself known as Diadumenos offering a mathematical and geometrical analysis of his anatomy, the supposed canon of Polycletus (ill. in Story, 1866, frontispiece)

6. The physical type of the modern Greeks (ill. in Knox's The Races of men, second edn, 1862)

7. Borghese Gladiator, Agasias, first century BC, Musee du Louvre, Paris, marble, H. 1.99m

8. Venus de Milo, "? ... andros of Antioch on the Maeander', c\200 BC or later, Musee du Louvre, Paris, marble, H. (with base) 2.50m

9. Horsemen, from the frieze of the Parthenon, Pheidias, c.442-438 BC, British Museum, London (Reproduced with the kind permission of the Conway Library, Courtauld Institute of Art, London)

10. Edward John Poynter (1836-1919) Fight between More of More Hall and the Dragon of Wantley, R A 1873, and Perseus and Andromeda, RA 1872, now disappeared, illustrated in The Art Journal Easter Annual, 1897, two of the four panels painted for Lord Wharncliffe to decorate the billiard room at Wortley Hall, near Sheffield

11. Discobolus, Roman marble copy of a lost bronze original by the Greek sculptor Myron, second century AD, H. 1.69m, Townley Collection, British Museum (Copyright The Trustees of the British Museum, British Museum Press)

12. Boris Anrep (1885-1969) Football, from the National Gallery mosaic floor which was com­pleted in 1929 (Reproduced with the kind permission of the National Gallery, London)

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Xll List of Plates

13. Carl Cauer (1828-85. Born in Bonn) An Olympian Victor thanking the Gods on his return from the Olympian games, dated 1868. White marble, life size, H. 221cm (87in). Sotheby's Billingshurst Sale 28 May 1986. Probably the one exhibited at the RA 1869 and 1870. A plaster model of a statue bearing the same title (in French) was also exhibited at the Salon in 1861

14. William Holman Hunt (1827-1910) The Shadow of Death 1870-3, retouched 1886, first exhibited 1873, Agnew's , tempera and oil on canvas, 214.2 x 168.2cm (Reproduced with the kind permission of Manchester City Art Galleries)

15. Edward John Poynter (1836-1919) Paul and Apollos, dated 1872, Tate Gallery, London, tempera, 610 x 610cm (24 x 24in.) (Reproduced by kind permission of Witt Library, Courtauld Institute of Art)

16. (i) Parthenon Horsemen (ii) Benedetto Pistrucci (1784-1855). St George and Dragon, design for the reverse of the new coinage for George I l l ' s reign. Pattern Crown, 1817. This design was revived in 1871 and was used for the gold sovereign and other denominations well into the twentieth century. (iii) Pistrucci's design revived in 1991 as a Christmas gift by the Royal Mint. (iv) Design for the silver florin, 1849. Compare the classicism of Pistrucci's design from the beginning and end of the nineteenth century with the Gothicism of British coins from the middle of the century, projecting different conceptions of British national identity.

17. Frederick Leighton (1830-96) An Athlete Wrestling with a Python, RA 1877, London, Tate Gallery, Bronze, H. 68 3/4 in. (Reproduced with kind permission of the Conway Library, Courtauld Institute of Art)

18. Edward John Poynter (1836-1919) Nausicaa and her Maidens playing Ball, 1878 sketch for the painting exhibited at RA 1879, 28.5 x 79.4cm (Reproduced with kind permission of the Witt Library, Courtauld Institute of Art, London)

19. Joseph-Michel Caille (1836-81) La Fondation de Marseille, 1865, Nantes, Musee des Beaux-Arts (Reproduced with kind permission of the Conway Library, Courtauld Institute of Art, London)

List of Plates X l l l

20. Edgar Degas (1834-1917) Petites files spartiates provoquant des garcons, c. 1860-2, retouched before 1880, oil on canvas, 109 x 155cm (Reproduced with kind permission of the National Gallery, London)

21. Victor Simeon (active c. 1858-?) Prometheus vase, also called Slave or Captive vase, designed for Minton's between 1875 and 1878. From a pattern book in the Minton archive (Stoke-on-Trent). A vase modelled on this design was exhibited at the Paris 1878 Exhibition and may be the one in the collection of Manchester City Art Galleries

22. Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse (1824-87) Prometheus, shown by Minton at the Great Exhibition of 1851, Minton Parian porcelain (Reproduced with kind permission of the Conway Library, Courtauld Institute of Art, London)

23. Emmanuel Fremiet (1824-1910) Gorille emportant une femme, 1887, Musee des Beaux-Arts, Nantes, plaster (illustrated here to give an idea of what Fremiet's Gorille emportant la Venus de Milo, c. 1871, whose present whereabouts are currently unknown, would have looked like) (ill. in Art Journal, 1891, p. 129)

24. Paul Cezanne (1839-1906) The Large Bathers, 1898-1905, Wilstach Collection, Philadelphia Museum of Art, USA, oil on canvas, 82 x 98in (Reproduced with kind permission of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, USA)

25. Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) Jugement de Paris, 1908, private collection, Japan, oil on canvas, 81 x 101cm (Reproduced with kind permission of the Witt Library, Courtauld Institute of Art)

Foreword

The revival of Hellenism has played a major part in modern European culture. In architecture, the arts, education and literature, classical Greek models were preponderant from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century, and for many they remain canonical to this day. But the influence of ancient Greece was not confined to culture. From the age of humanism through the Enlightenment and Romanticism, Greek models exerted a pro­found influence on Western ideals of social and political life. In the long nineteenth century, the Greek revival was particularly pervasive in social and political thought and more generally in Western political culture. In this period, western philosophers, educators and statesmen sought to pre­scribe what they understood as the ancient Greek virtues of individual excellence, courage, beauty, manliness and patriotism, and to prescribe these exempla virtutis for emulation by rising generations of citizens. In this context, the return to ancient Greek aesthetic canons was pivotal, for it provided an agreed reference point and standard of individual and commu­nal excellence against which to measure the progress of men and nations.

It is this nexus of culture and politics, art and nationalism, that Dr Athena Leoussi's seminal study explores. Unlike other books about the influence of ancient Greece on Victorian Britain (or more generally the West), which deal with aspects of that influence seriatim, Dr Leoussi's work combines a richly detailed exploration of the paintings and sculpture of the mid-nineteenth century with a systematic and penetrating analysis of the role of the Hellenic artistic revival in the development of British and French national identities. Her research establishes clearly the crucial part played by the return to Greek aesthetic ideals and by the rediscovery of Pheidian figural types in the imagery of nineteenth-century French and British nationalism. At the same time, her work demonstrates the reverse side of the causal chain, namely, the way in which the efflorescence of British and French nationalism in this period found in Greek aesthetic ideals and bodily types the perfect expres­sion and medium for an evolving sense of national identity.

To establish this connection between Greek bodily images and ideals and British and French national identities, Dr Leoussi investigates the growing importance of positivist science, and more especially physical anthro­pology. Hence her choice of period. It is only by the mid-nineteenth century that we can appreciate the extent of influence of physical anthro­pology and gauge its vital role in the figural arts. Through a careful analysis of the writings of physical anthropologists and of the anatomical instruction

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Foreword xv

manuals for artists in the main schools of art in France and Britain, Dr Leoussi reveals the intimate connections between Greek bodily images, the 'findings' of a positivistic physical anthropology and the burgeoning ideals of citizenship and national identity in the two national states. This is a fas­cinating and original thesis. But to establish its relevance for both France and Britain, it needs to be qualified by placing this connection in its histori­cal context. Accordingly, in the second part of her study, Dr Leoussi con­siders in depth the social, religious and political factors that shaped the 'Greek' expression of national identity in the two countries. Her analysis reveals the critical role of religion in the ensemble of factors linking Greek aesthetic ideals to modern nationalism. Whereas in Britain, a muscular Protestant Christianity was in harmony with Greek aesthetic ideals and images of manliness, Catholicism in France with its ideal of suffering impeded the acceptance of Greek bodily imagery and manly aesthetic ideals - until the national debacle of the Franco-Prussian war and the advent of a determined secular nationalism in the Third Republic which became uneasily allied with a transformed, muscular variety of Catholicism. While in other respects, leaders of French taste and thought shared the phil-hellenism of the British, the Catholic preponderance in education prevented the wholesale adoption of Greek aesthetic ideals until 1871.

Through a systematic comparison of the two countries, backed by a comprehensive statistical analysis of art exhibited in London and Paris during this period, Dr Leoussi's study reveals the differences, but also the underlying similarities, in the 'Greek' conceptions of French and British nationalism and culture. What is striking is the way in which 'racial' Hellenism supported French and British national identities, endowing them with a sense of imperial confidence and superiority, while at the same time retaining them within the orbit of Greek cultural ideals which had little place for Gobineau's Aryanism or its later racial-eugenic bio­logical manifestations. This suggests that in France and Britain modern racial conceptions of the Greek body were, on the whole, firmly sub­ordinated to Pheidian aesthetic ideals and that the influence of ancient Greek culture as a whole encouraged a progressive and relatively open sense of national identity in this period.

These are some of the many issues that Dr Leoussi's wide-ranging study illuminates. In seeking to combine the sociological study of politics and nationalism with an art-historical analysis of the influence of classical hellenism, Dr Leoussi's pioneering book enriches our understanding of a vitally formative period in Western history and demonstrates the necessity and value of interdisciplinary studies for grasping the multi-faceted relation­ships between aesthetic expressions, cultural ideals and political identity.

ANTHONY D. SMITH

Acknowledgements

This book is based on my doctoral dissertation at the London School of Economics and it offers me an opportunity publicly to thank all those people who, in one way or another, made it possible.

I should first like to thank my parents for their infinite love, support and patience during this exciting voyage of discovery - a voyage which many times turned into a despairing maze or a frustrating standstill. I owe special gratitude to my father, not only for enabling me to embark upon this wondrous voyage, but also for being an ever-present 'Cape of Good Hope' for my material and intellectual provisions. I am no less grateful to my mother for that special kind of encouragement which only she could provide for me.

I should like to thank my supervisor Professor Anthony D. Smith for enriching the scope of this study; for his constant attention to and meticu­lous care for my work; for the discipline which he taught me; for the love of accuracy, clarity, specificity, detail and historical perspective which he cultivated in me; for his creativity and width of knowledge; and last but not least for his faith in my ability to perform the required tasks.

I should like to thank David Marsland who proved a constant, loving and resourceful companion of this voyage 'unto this last', and I am indebted to Professor David Martin, my hitherto unacknowledged legislator, who guided my steps during my uphill struggle towards understanding.

I should like to thank Mr Leo Bernard for his editorial work in which he engaged not only his immensely generous, sensitive and discreet personality, but also his erudition and culture; as I should thank his wife, Philippa, for her constant support of both of us. I am grateful to the Greek Government for supplying that other most vital encouragement - the financial support of a scholarship. I should also like to thank the Hellenic Foundation for the further support which they so generously offered to me. I should like to thank most warmly Mr Kyriakos Metaxas for helping me through yet another research project on Greece and the Greeks, and Dr John House who, with his colleagues at the Courtauld Institute of Art, initiated me during my period of study there as well as after it, into the values and skills of art history. I should like to thank the staff of the Royal Academy Library, and particularly Nick Savage, for their generous, swift and intelligent help. I should like to thank Professor Donald MacRae for many enlightening conversations and for showing me by his own example

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A cknowledgements xvn

the academic imperative, the untiring will to know. I should also like to thank the academic staff of the LSE Department of Sociology as a whole for encouraging me and for providing answers to many questions. I am grateful to my supervisor's secretary, Jean MacRae, for all her help and friendship. I should like to thank the staffs of the Witt and Conway libraries for their excellent and conscientious service and their expert advice regarding the illustrations of this work; John Sunderland was espe­cially helpful in this connection. Among my peers, I should like to thank Dr Roland Axtmann for his friendship and for the well-trained, critical mind which opened up for me new intellectual horizons; and the Rev. Peter Jupp for introducing me so effectively to the world of nineteenth-century 'muscular Christianity'. I owe thanks, too, to Martin Greenwood for sharing with me many of those long and late hours in the British Library, and for familiarising me with nineteenth-century sculpture. I am also grateful to him for introducing me to Dr Philip Ward-Jackson whose extraordinary generosity and erudition enabled me to dive into and surface from deep waters. I should like to thank Professor Ralph Segalman for communicating to me his down-to-earth approach to academic research and for many pieces of practical advice. I should also like to thank both him and his wife Anita for the support they gave me. I am grateful to Helen Gregory, that good fairy of the British Library, who so often and so miraculously appeared to help me out with this or that obscure reference. Lastly, but not least, I should like to thank Angus O'Neill for his skilful compilation of the index. Needless to say, the responsibility for the conclusions which I drew from this research rests entirely with me.

I should finally like to dedicate this study to the memory of Doula Mouriki, Professor of Art History at the National Technical University of Athens, whose own enthusiasm and achievement showed me the intense satisfaction which one can derive from scholarly labour. Her sudden death only sealed in my mind the vision of the scholarly life as a full life.

Introduction

The aim of this study is to explain the causes and measure the extent of what has been widely recognised as an important change in mid-nineteenth century English art. This change, reflected in such terms as 'High Victorian Renaissance' and 'Victorian Olympus', consisted in the expansion in English painting and sculpture of subjects taken from ancient Greek history and mythology. This movement, which was in effect another of the classical and specifically Greek revivals in the history of West European art, also led to the increased use of the Pheidian figural type in both Greek subjects and in other 'History' subjects.

The years 1833 to 1880 have been chosen as the period for study. This choice was determined primarily by the need to examine English artists' interest in Greek subjects in the context of the emergence of the modern Greek state in 1833 after four centuries of Ottoman rule. Many Europeans saw in the new Greek state the revival of ancient Greece and, in this context, the original hypothesis was that the classical revival in English art was a celebration of modern Greece. However, the research showed that the classical revival which marked English as well as French art during the second half of the nineteenth century was in fact a celebration of modern England and France and a denigration of modern Greece. The choice of this relatively wide chronological span was also determined by the need to locate the new classicism more precisely in time.

The catalogues of the annual exhibitions of the works of living artists at the Royal Academy provided a major source of information regarding mainstream artistic life, and gave evidence of the new interest in the re­presentation of ancient Greeks during the period under consideration. The catalogues described by means of short titles, and sometimes by accompa­nying texts, the works of art which were exhibited each year and note was taken of all those which referred to Greek life and topography both ancient and modern. In order to evaluate the importance of these works in relation to English art as a whole, and in particular to the wider ethnographic interest in foreign peoples and locations, note was also taken of other non-British subjects, and these were compared statistically with Greek subjects.

The classical revival which also marked French art during the second half of the nineteenth century provided an appropriate comparison against which to test explanations of developments in English art. A comparable

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Introduction xix

set of data was obtained from the records of the exhibitions of the Paris Salon, the French equivalent of the Royal Academy. Works on Greek sub­jects and on other non-French subjects were noted, and their pattern com­pared with the results obtained from the study of the Royal Academy. The comparison showed a shared interest among French and English artists in Greek, and particularly ancient Greek subjects, but with differences in the aspects of Greek life chosen for illustration, and also in the timing of what was, in effect, the revival of classical Greece in English and French art.

The differing characters of these classical revivals are related not only to the structure of art theory and education but also to the scientific, reli­gious and political contexts within which English and French artists worked. This study relies on three types of primary material: first, the catalogues of the annual official art exhibitions in the Royal Academy and the Salon; second, the writings of the major eighteenth- and nineteenth-century life-scientists, and especially those of physical anthropologists, on the racial divisions of mankind in general and the Greeks in particular; and third, the instructional manuals of artistic anatomy used in the Royal Academy schools and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. These were written by anatomists, physical anthropologists and physicians and also by scientifically inclined artists.

Although the study is limited to metropolitan and hence to English art, the labels 'Britain' and 'British' have seemed more appropriate in some contexts. The term 'English artists', however, refers to the artists who exhibited in the Royal Academy and not to nationality; similarly, 'French artists' refers to exhibitors at the Paris Salon.

This study is divided into three parts. Part I examines the interaction between anthropological science, art theory and art education. Chapter 1 is concerned in particular with the development of scientific ideas about the Greeks in Britain and France as a part of a new orientation and scientific discipline called physical anthropology. Physical anthropology was the result of the application of positivism to the study of man and human culture. It gave rise to a number of new classifications of individuals and groups and explanations of cultural variations which were centred on the idea of race. These classifications reflected the realisation that human beings varied in their physical appearance and in relation to some con­ception of anatomical perfection. British and French physical anthropolo­gists held similar views on the Greeks as a result of exchanges among European scientists, and most of these views shared the belief that the body of the young athletes of fifth-century BC Greece not only exemplified the European physical type but also represented mankind in its physical perfection.

XX Introduction

Chapter 2 examines the impact of positivism on English and French art theory and the growth of artists' interest in the new anthropological knowledge - an interest which gave rise to a new category of artistic subject-matter, ethnographic art. Nineteenth-century ethnographic art con­sisted in the representation of both the cultural and the physical diversity of mankind. Chapter 3 documents the introduction of the anthropological view of the Greeks into official art education, through the revival of artis­tic anatomy as an important element of the education of English and French artists. Chapter 4 accounts for the emergence of a new classicism in English and French aesthetic theory as a consequence of the new posi-tivist aesthetics. The new aesthetics which equated nature with beauty led to the adoption of the Pheidian figural type as the embodiment of beauty, following that particular scientific view of human nature which identified the Greek athletes who modelled for Pheidias and Polycletus with perfect man. The new classicism, which consisted in the admiration of the figura quadrata, and the physical health and strength of the Pheidian bodily type, differed from eighteenth-century neo-classicism which exalted the elon­gated abstractions of later Greek and Graeco-Roman figural art. The same chapter identifies the range of Greek subject-matter statistically and in the context of the wider ethnographic movement.

The circumstances considered in Part I, physical anthropology and the ethnographic movement, do not fully account either for the prominence of works on ancient Greek subjects during the second half of the nineteenth century, or for the distinct iconographic and chronological patterns of these works in English and French art. Consequently, Part II is devoted to the study of the religious, political and educational contexts of the classi­cal revivals in English and French art. It enquires into the extent to which the ancient Greeks were more than an object of scientific knowledge and artistic representation (whether for aesthetic pleasure or the anthropologi­cal education of the public) in the two countries. It shows the expansion of the Greek physical ideal from physical anthropology to other spheres of social life, and documents the emergence of a new, racial Hellenism in English and French societies. The new Hellenism differed markedly from the earlier civic Hellenism of neo-classical Europe in its emphasis on the Greek body.

Chapter 5 studies the impact of the new knowledge about man, and about ancient Greek culture, on Christian doctrine and institutions in England and France. Differing religious traditions in the two countries led to the adoption by English Protestant leaders of certain themes from physi­cal anthropology and to the resistance of French Catholic thinkers to these ideas until around 1871. The association of religion with science intro-

Introduction xxi

duced the body of the ancient Greek athlete, as well as certain Greek religious conceptions, into the Christian universe of sacred objects and practices.

Chapter 6 demonstrates, first, the expansion of the scientific idea of race, through its adoption by leaders of English and French public opinion, as the objective measure of national distinction and pride; and, second, some of the educational and political consequences of the claim to a Greek physical identity, made for their nations by anthropologists in England and France. Although this study is concerned only with the influence of phy­sical anthropology on nineteenth-century culture, it is impossible to over­look the appalling consequences which stemmed from the attempt, in the twentieth century, by Nazi Germany to turn scientific enquiry, whose results are forever on trial, into the finalities of ethics and state policy.

In Part III three chapters are devoted to the connection between the racial Hellenism of English and French societies and the emergence of images of Greece in English and French art. This analysis focuses on the images of ancient Greeks which dominate these subjects, and seeks to interpret the statistical and thematic pattern of these images by reference to English and French social life. It attributes the differences between the two countries primarily to the differing religious attitudes to science and the care for the body and interprets the emergence of the Pheidian figural type in English and French art as an affirmation of the national, in the sense of racial, identity of the modern European nations.

There have been many previous studies of the revival of classical Greece in English art to which this work is much indebted. It differs, however, in scope and method from essentially monographic and descrip­tive treatments, such as R. and L. Ormond's Lord Leighton (1975), J. Gage's G. F. Watts: A Nineteenth-Century Phenomenon (1974) or J. Maas' Victorian Painters (1988). This study aims to set art in a broader context, and in this respect it differs also from such otherwise important studies of Victorian Hellenism as Richard Jenkyns' prize-winning The Victorians and Ancient Greece (1980) and Dignity and Decadence: Victorian Art and the Classical Inheritance (1991) and Frank M. Turner's monumental The Greek Heritage in Victorian Britain (1981). These studies tend to take the form of general and descriptive surveys of the manifestations of ancient Greek culture in various departments of Victorian cultural life, encompassing architecture, design, literature and the theatre rather than the fine arts alone. Despite this large frame of refer­ence, the Greek revival in Victorian art is not considered as an integral part of the religious, political and educational beliefs and institutions of English society.

XX11 Introduction

This study differs from its predecessors in providing an assessment of the actual extent of the Greek revival in English painting and sculpture considered as a part of the new ethnographic or, as we should say, racial art whose extent is also measured; and it provides a systematic explanation of at least some of its features by relating art to society and by comparing English and French artistic and social structures. This procedure reveals systematic correspondences between art and society and points to the origins of the new Renaissance, not in archaeological discovery and artis­tic tradition alone, but also in the wider context of the society within which the artists worked. This study shows the close links between artistic practice and certain scientific, religious and political preoccupations and institutions. It claims that English artists' fondness for ancient Greek sub­jects reflected the social and cultural contexts of their day.

In contrast to works like C. Wood's Olympian Dreamers (1983), the present study shows the realism of these Victorian representations of ancient Greek life. Indeed, it will be seen that the origin of the attachment to Greek subjects can be found less in Victorian escapism and in passive nostalgia for a distant past, but more in the Victorian conviction that the forms of ancient Greek life should be revived by following certain scientific prescriptions. This will be seen in the close similarities between representations of ancient Greek life in English art, and its imitation in English society, and the differences between the English and the French Greek revivals.

As an analysis of nineteenth-century physical anthropology, this study also differs from similar work such as Mary Cowling's The Artist as Anthropologist (1989) which have bypassed a systematic study of the anthropology of the Greeks while recognising its importance as the nine­teenth-century measure of man; furthermore, studies of physical anthro­pology, including Cowling's and D. Pick's Faces of Degeneration (1989), have concentrated on the head, overlooking the mid-century shift of focus to the whole body.

This study follows closely the iconological tradition established by Aby Warburg and elaborated by Erwin Panofsky and Ernst H. Gombrich; and the sociology of drama, religion and art developed by Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, Lucien Goldman and David Martin. It is also guided by John Hall's study of the relationship between art, and in his case literature, and society; and by the quantitative and comparative method of studying works of art which Anthony D. Smith applied to the study of the 'histori­cal revival' in late eighteenth-century English and French art and which itself included a revival of ancient Greek motifs. Material is offered here

Introduction xxm

for a further comparison between eighteenth-century neo-classicism as studied by Smith and the nineteenth-century classical revival.

It should be made clear that no attempt has been made in this study to capture all the social and cultural nuances which artists projected in images of Greek life. It is, rather, a contribution to two related academic disciplines, art history and the sociology of art. To the former it con­tributes a statistical and iconological account of the classical Greek revivals which emerged in English and French art during the second half of the nineteenth century; to the latter, some new evidence of the relations which can develop between art and society. In both endeavours, it tends to support Aby Warburg's view that works of art are 'documents of expres­sion' - that even the most independent, liberal or formal works of art can be documents of the mind and life of the society in which they were produced.