[This is the first in a series describing Scots who made an
impact outside their own country.]
Scotland historically was a relatively poor and small nation
but the Scots are an ambitious people. The growing power of Britain from the 17th
century onwards, the creation of a global empire and the lure of wealth in the
US and overseas stimulated the Scots spirit and many had an impact well beyond
Scotland itself.
One such was the highly controversial aristocratic figure of
Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin.
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| Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin in 1788 |
Thomas Bruce (1766-1841),
born in Broomhall, Fife, succeeded his elder brother at the age of 5 to become
7th Earl of Elgin and 11th Earl of Kincardine. He entered the Guards
but soon moved on to diplomacy becoming Envoy to Brussels, Prussia and then
Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1799 to 1803. While there he organised
over 10 years the removal of sculptures from the Athens Parthenon and from
other Athenian sites at a cost to him personally of at least £70,000. The
sculptures were shipped back to Britain (after a ship-wreck of one of his
vessels, from which all were recovered at much expense) and at first they
adorned Elgin’s Scottish mansion. In 1816 the sculptures, known to history as The Elgin Marbles, dating from the 5th Century BC and attributed to the Greek master Phidias, were sold to the
British government for £35,000 and transferred to the newly established British
Museum where they have remained for almost 200 years.
Elgin was considered a cultivated person but he attracted scandal
in 1807 by divorcing his first wife, rich heiress Mary Nisbet, whom he pursued
relentlessly through the English and Scots courts and sued her lover, Robert
Ferguson of Raith, for his expenses. He married secondly Elizabeth Oswald, a
laird’s daughter, in 1810 but from 1816 he lived in Paris, where he died in 1841.
Elgin would have gone down in history,
if at all, as a dim figure were it not for his removal of the Parthenon Marbles,
a matter still passionately debated to this day.
At the time of their removal, Greece and all her artefacts
were indubitably within the power and control of the Ottoman Empire. The
Acropolis in Athens was an Ottoman fort and Elgin sought and, he claimed,
obtained permission to erect scaffolding, take casts and sketches of the
sculpted figures on the Parthenon (the temple dedicated to the goddess Athena) and
remove “a few stones with inscriptions and figures thereon”. He said he
received a Firman, a formal Ottoman
document, but the original has never been found (surprising, as the Ottoman
archives are extensive) and all the evidence relies on a later Italian
translation of the purported Firman. There
is no evidence that he had permission to remove wholesale parts of the
Parthenon, which is what he did, after bribing the local Voivode (Governor) of Athens. Such bribery was then, and sadly
still remains, a commonplace practice in Levantine and Balkan transactions and
indeed much further afield.
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| The Parthenon in Athens in 2009 |
Elgin’s team started work as he had first described it with
designers, draughtsmen and modellers taking casts of the sculptures under the
supervision of the Neapolitan painter Lusieri.
Seeing his opportunity and shocked by the poor condition of the monument,
he removed almost half (247 feet of the remaining 524 feet) the remaining
frieze (the band of decoration above the prediments), 15 metopes (panels
containing figures below the roof), 17 statuary figures and various pedimental
fragments. He also removed one of the six Caryatids adorning the Erechtheum
(the temple 50 yards from the Parthenon). Elgin’s workmen were crude and they
damaged the structure of the Parthenon as they prised off or sawed away at the
stones.
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| The Elgin Marbles in London |
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| Elgin statuary in London |
When Elgin tried to negotiate the sale of the Marbles to the
British government, there were voices which questioned the morality if not the
legality of his acquisition. Several members of Parliament, including the
radical Lord Byron described the removal of the Marbles as “looting” and a
Parliamentary Enquiry was held in 1816.
By 80 to 20 votes the purchase was approved and Elgin exonerated from
any suggestion of dishonest practice. Much was made of his Firman but the provenance of his ownership was supported by a
“dodgy dossier”, which would hardly survive a modern forensic examination. Yet
we should not judge early 19th century art acquisitions by modern
standards.
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| Metope of Centaur and Lapith fighting |
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| The Caryatid in London |
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| A section of the Parthenon Frieze in London |
Greece became an independent country in 1830 and has always
been resentful of the loss of her antiquities and especially of the Elgin
Marbles. Greece asserts her ownership of the Marbles and this has prevented the
British Museum from even lending them to Greece as there is every chance Greece
would simply seize them. Requests for the return of the Marbles to Greece have
always been turned aside by the Museum and a number of arguments of varied
cogency have been deployed.
(1)
The Marbles were entirely legally acquired by
Lord Elgin – but there are doubts about their provenance, as set out above.
(2)
If Elgin had not saved the Marbles, they would
have been destroyed in Athens as the locals then had no respect for them. - This is perhaps true, but unprovable.
(3)
The British Museum has looked after the Marbles
well. - Sadly, opinion is divided on this, as the great art entrepreneur Lord
Duveen in 1938 had the Marbles cleaned using scrapers and chisels to make them
white in the mistaken belief that that was how they were in ancient times. Most
of the Marbles irrevocably lost the mellow golden “patina” they had beneath the
grime.
(4)
The Marbles have been seen by millions at the
British Museum and Athens cannot display them appropriately. - This was once
true but in 2009 Greece opened the new rather splendid Acropolis Museum within
easy sight of the Parthenon, with reserved space for the Marbles.
(5)
The Marbles cannot be restored to the original
monument and returning them to Athens only substitutes one Museum with another.
– There is merit in this argument although the Greeks argue that the Marbles
are unique symbols of the Greek spirit and their right place is in Athens
gathered with the other revered Acropolis antiquities.
(6)
The Museum says that returning the Marbles to
Greece would open a Pandora’s Box to other restitution claims against many
national museums. – There is are various precedents already and the Greeks are
limiting their claim to the Parthenon Marbles.
This controversy will run and run but public opinion in
Britain is moving in favour of restitution. The Greeks can be rather shrill on this sensitive subject. Glamorous
actress Melina Mercouri emoted huskily for restitution in the 1980s while she
was Minister for Culture but she was diplomatic.
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| Melina Mercouri |
Her campaigns were to no avail and when Tony Blair’s office
was asked in 1997 whether his new government would return the Marbles to the
Greeks some wit replied that it was as likely as returning Measles to the
Germans! Views are changing and I guess in my time an historic injustice will
be rectified.
So the 7th Lord Elgin passes out of history. His son James
Bruce, 8th Earl of Elgin, was a well-regarded Governor General of
Canada and Viceroy of India. The predatory Elgin gene however surfaced when he
led a punitive action against the Chinese in 1860 during an Opium War and
ordered the looting and destruction by fire of the Summer Palace in Peking. No
doubt in time there will be a new storm of the Elgin Ming Teacups!
SMD
2.03.15
Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2015
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