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

Apollo, April, 2003 by Tim Knox

Another owner of Egyptian antiquities listed in Gordon's treatise was Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1753). Most of his pieces were small bronzes, scarabs, and ushabti, but he also acquired, with 'the Museum of Mr. J. Kemp' near Hay Market, two complete 'ancient mummies in their Wooden Coffins, the heads of a Man and a Woman carved on the Outside of the Coffins'. (32) From 1742, at least one of these was kept at Sloane's country house in Chelsea, where Per Kalm saw it in 1748. (33) On Sloane's death in 1753, some one hundred and sixty Egyptian antiquities--the majority bought from earlier collections--came with his bequest to found the British Museum. (34)

Most of the owners of Egyptian material appear to have been inquisitive antiquaries rather than aristocratic virtuosi seeking works of art for their country houses. An exception was Sir Francis Dashwood, 2nd Bt., of West Wycombe Park, Buckinghamshire, who travelled extensively in Egypt and Asia Minor in the late 1730s, penetrating as far as the ancient cities of Baalbec and Palmyra. (35) He is said to have brought back a mummy that, in an inventory made after his death in 1781, is recorded as being displayed on a 'gilt bracket' in the Library at West Wycombe. (36) Another aristocratic traveller was Dashwood's friend, John Montagu, the 4th Earl of Sandwich, who journeyed to Egypt in 1739, in the company of Dr. Charles Perry. He must have collected there the 'many small egyptian idols' seen by Horace Walpole when he visited his seat, Hinchingbrooke in Huntingdonshire, in 1763. (37) In 1741, Sandwich was a founder member of an 'Egyptian Society', which in 1742 staged the unwrapping of a mummy belonging to the 2nd Duke of Richmond. (38) The Duke owned two mummies, probably brought back from Egypt by Dr. Pococke in 1738, which he kept, together with other antiquities, in the Gallery of his house in Whitehall. (39) After the Richmond House fire in 1791, one found its way into the possession of Sir John Soane, while the other was sent to Goodwood, where it is recorded in the Old Dining Room in 1822:

In a corner of the room stands in a glass case an Egyptian Mummy, in a high state of preservation, the Body is five feet high, and is that of a female, the colours of the hieroglyphicks with which it is adorned, are quite vivid and perfect; it was sent to England from Egypt, as a present to the third Duke of Richmond, in a stone case or coffin, the lid, on which the Donor had placed an inscription, being unfortunately broken or lost, it is uncertain from whence the Body was taken, or what rank it is supposed once to have held in Society. (40)

By the end of the century it was displayed, rather unappetisingly considering it had no lid, in the State Dining Room (with its astonishing Neo-Egyptian decor), but it was ejected in 1906 by the 8th Duchess and given to Brighton Museum. (41)

In view of the fact that Egyptian antiquities were clearly the exception rather than the rule in British country house collections in the 1750s, it remains to be established under what circumstances John Chute acquired his 'Egyptian monstrosity'? We can be sure that Chute, 'distinguished by his fan and eyeglass' and 'enfeebled by a melancholy diet of milk and turnips which he adopted to avert the dreadful attacks of gout to which he was a lifelong victim', did not visit Egypt himself. (42) It might, however, be worth speculating how he may have been persuaded to acquire it during his seven-year sojourn in Italy. John Chute arrived in Italy from France in 1740 and by October he had got as far as Siena. (43) He settled in Florence in August 1741 and stayed there four years with his cousin, Francis Whithed (1719-51). They were guests of Sir Horace Mann (1701-86), remarking that other English travellers were 'amazed what can keep us so long here, they think it the dullest place.' (44) It was only the death of his other brother Francis in 1745 that made them proceed on to Rome, where Mann said 'they propose to stay most part of the summer, and then hasten to England.' (45) Mann gave them a letter of introduction to Cardinal Alessandro Albani, who 'introduced them to everybody'. (46) I suspect that it was through Albani that Chute acquired his Egyptian figure, for the Cardinal was not only one of the greatest collectors of Greco-Roman sculpture of his day, but also a pioneer connoisseur of Egyptian works of art. We know that Chute was buying in Rome that summer: on the recommendation of Albani, he purchased--on behalf of his friend Horace Walpole--a magnificent marble eagle, recently unearthed in the Boccapadugli gardens. (47) He also made more modest acquisitions on his own account, presumably on the strength of, as he expressed it, 'being one horrid step nearer to a mouldering estate'. (48) If he did acquire it in Rome, Chute's statue of Ramesses was by far his most ambitious purchase there on his own account.