The Vyne Ramesses: 'Egyptian Monstrosities' in British country house collections

Apollo, April, 2003 by Tim Knox

One of the strangest curiosities of The Vyne in Hampshire (Fig. 1) was once a fragmentary Egyptian statue of the Pharaoh Ramesses IV (twentieth Dynasty, c. 1161-1155 BC) (Figs. 3-4). Sadly, in 1958, following the death of Sir Charles Chute, 1st Baronet (1879-1956), it was expelled from the house. Carved out of dark grey-green schist, the sculpture depicts a kneeling figure of a man wearing the traditional nemes head-dress. The entire front part of the figure, including the hands and knees, has sheared off, but otherwise it is in excellent condition and is a rare example of royal sculpture of the later Twentieth Dynasty. (1) While it might seem unusual to encounter such an important, and relatively large-scale piece of ancient Egyptian sculpture in an English country house, more surprising is the fact that 'The Vyne Ramesses' is recorded as having been in the house since the mid-eighteenth century, appearing in the 1754 Inventory as the 'Egyptian figure'. (2) The Chutes evidently knew exactly what it was, with the result that it was prominently displayed and valued, being first shown in the Staircase Hall, and then in the Stone Gallery. (3) Later, it was moved upstairs to the Oak Gallery, where it can be dimly discerned in a photograph of c. 1880 (Fig. 5). (4) Here it was displayed with the best furniture in the house, alongside sculptural treasures acquired by Wiggett Chute, who inherited The Vyne in 1827, including marble busts of Roman emperors, said to have belonged to the infamous Manuel de Godoy, known as the 'Prince of Peace'. (5) It was even provided with a specially adapted plinth to match the others in the room.

The circumstances of the acquisition of 'the Egyptian Statue' are obscure, but it must have arrived in the house during the time of Anthony Chute (1691-1754), on whose death the 1754 Inventory was taken. Anthony made many improvements at The Vyne and bought some important pieces of furniture, but he is not otherwise known to have been a collector of antiquities. (6) It is more probable that it was among the works of art acquired in Italy by his younger brother, John (1701-76), a friend of Horace Walpole (1717-97), who lived abroad, mainly in Italy, between 1738 and 1746 (Fig. 2). (7) After his return, as heir apparent, John Chute acted as an artistic adviser to his brother. In 1753, he was urging him to buy eleven plaster busts in London 'as good as any we could have got by sending them on purpose from Italy', (8) and he may well have recommended other acquisitions. (9) No antiquities are recorded as being sent, but the Roman inscriptions set into the walls of the Stone Gallery were a gift to John from Horace Walpole's elder brother, Edward (1706-84), in about 1760. (10) It is regrettable, therefore, that, after more then two hundred years, the 'Egyptian figure' was allowed to leave The Vyne, at least in part because its venerable association with the house was not fully appreciated at the time. From the surviving correspondence, it appears that it was not thought a happy complement to the other fittings and furnishings of the house. Sir Charles Chute's executors were, therefore, encouraged to sell it to the British Museum in 1958, as part of a settlement following the bequest, two years previously, of the house and its contents to the National Trust. (11) The statue remains in the collections of the British Museum, scarcely recognisable, its lower parts having been comprehensively 'restored' in plaster--of Paris in about 1959. (12) However, at least the statue remains in a public collection in this country and the Trust has recently obtained a remarkably convincing cast of it--minus the restorations--so as to return, in some form, Ramesses to his old home (Fig. 6). (13)

Egyptian antiquities are not unknown in British country houses, but the great majority of the mummies, statues and smaller objects which remain in houses today are nineteenth-century imports, dating from an era when the phenomenon of the country-house curiosity museum was at its height, and the Victorian Grand Tour encompassed Egypt as well as France and Italy. Some of these collections were large and important, like the group of objects collected between 1815 and 1819 by William Bankes (d. 1855) at Kingston Lacy, Dorset, but most Egyptian objects were isolated curios. (14) Nor were they always accorded the respect their antiquity might have been expected to inspire: at Penrhyn Castle in Gwynedd, for example, a fine basalt statue of Osiris served as a useful doorstop in the Dining Room, (15) while at Kingston Lacy the granite sarcophagus of Amenope was found abandoned in a garden rockery. (16) But it is the presence of Egyptian objects, particularly large-scale sculpture and mummies, in country house collections in Britain in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries which concerns us here. The following article attempts to put 'The Vyne Ramesses' back in its country-house context.

Almost all the early Egyptian relics in England were brought back by travellers. George Sandys (1578-1644) (17) who was in Egypt in 1610, described how 'mummes' could 'be bought for dollars apeece at the Citie'. He failed to buy one, but speaks of 'little models of stone or metall; some of the shape of men ... with the heads of sheepe, haulkes, dogs, &c. others of cats, beetles monkies and such like. Of these I brought away divers with me. (18) Sandys, the son of Edwin Sandys, Archbishop of York, shared the same name as the family who had owned The Vyne since the early fourteenth century, and who sold it to the Chutes in 1653. It is tempting to associate 'The Vyne Ramesses' with this early visitor to Egypt, particularly since we know that Sandys gave some of the little bronzes he collected to John Tradescant's Museum at Lambeth. (19) However, Sandys' family came from Hawkshead in Lancashire, and any connexion with their Hampshire namesakes at The Vyne seems distant. (20) More significant is the fact there is no evidence to suggest that George Sandys did bestow this heavy and distinctive sculpture upon The Vyne, where its presence is unlikely to have gone unremarked for long. (21) Then as now, Egyptian artefacts were sufficiently unusual as to be valuable gifts. Charles I's queen, Henrietta Maria (1609-69) gave a mummy, esteemed 'a great raritie', to Thomas Bushell (1594-1674) in 1635, and he proudly displayed it in the grotto he created at Enstone, near Woodstock in Oxfordshire. (22) John Aubrey saw it many years later, but noted that 'the dampness of the place has spoiled it with mouldinesse'. (23)