The Harris Museum Pediment

The Harris has recently been featuring close-up views of the figures and inscriptions on the building’s pediment on its Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/HarrisMuseumandArtGallery). They prompted Jim Burscough to dig out his notes on ‘High Culture and Tall Chimneys. Art Institutions and Urban Society in Lancashire, 1780-1914’, by James Moore, in which the author examined the inspiration for their creation, and the extent to which James Hibbert, the architect (and much more) of the Harris was influenced by his love of Classical Greek culture.

Bob Snape, professor of cultural history at Bolton University, has also written interestingly on the subject. His article is on line: Objects of utility: cultural responses to industrial collections in municipal museums 1845-1914.

Jim supplied the following extracts from James Moore’s book:

---

James Hibbert’s ideas about the role and importance of classical scholarship are central to understanding the nature of the new library and art gallery, its early collecting policy and its educational activities. Hibbert, as planner, architect and chairman of the library and art gallery committee, effectively controlled the whole project, while Charles Jacson, who later gained much of the credit for the gallery, did little more than administer the project and its accounts.

… The powerful influence of the philhellene Alderman James Hibbert meant that the Harris Library, Museum and Art Gallery was to be one of the last major neo-classical art galleries in England.

… For Hibbert, the library and art gallery should represent only excellence. This attitude was also represented in the detail of the exterior of the building and the sculptured pediment. The building was a self-conscious tribute to the Greek classical tradition and in particular to the age of Pericles, widely regarded as the apex of Greek civilisation. It represented and celebrated the ‘prodigious superiority of the Greeks over every other nation, in all works of real taste and genius’. (87)

Around the central lantern was inscribed Pericles’ funeral oration [for the Athenians, after the first year of the Peloponnesian War, as reported] by Thucydides, not in translation, but in the original Greek.

AMAOEM XAO EITIYAMEM IIAPA XI EAYOP VAI OT PETKEM ΛΟΜΟΜ ΕΜ ΣΓ ΟΙΘΕΙΑ ΡΓΛΑΙΜΕΙ ΕΠΙΧΘΑΥΓ ΑΚΚΑ ΘΑΙ ΕΜ ΣΓ ΑΓ ΠΘΟΡΓΟΟΤΡΓ ΑΧΘΑΥΟΡ ΑΜΓΛΓ ΠΑΘ ΕΥΑΡΣΕ ΣΤΡ ΧΜΕΛΓΟ ΛΑΚΚΟΜ Γ ΣΟΥ ΕΘΧΟΥ ΕΜΔΙΑΣΑΣΑΙ

‘For the whole earth is the sepulchre of illustrious men; not only are they commemorated by columns and inscriptions in their own country, but in foreign land there dwells also an unwritten memorial of them, graven, not upon stone, but in the hearts of men.’ (88)

The inscription was a recognition of the debt owed to classical civilisation, not merely for the style and beauty of the building, but for its contribution to modern learning. Beneath the lantern, the pedimental sculpture reflected the same theme, with Pericles in the centre surrounded by some of his most famous contemporaries associated with literature, poetry, philosophy and art. On the right-hand side Parmides, Zeno and Socrates discuss philosophy, while Thucydides contemplates history. At the centre is Pericles with Ictinus, the main architect of the Parthenon, and [Anaxagoras]. On the left are Pindar, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and finally Herodotus with his completed books. These men are further alluded to in the inscription below the pediment, appropriately enough in words written by Britain’s most illustrious philhellene, Lord Byron.

‘The dead, but sceptered Sovrans, who still rule
Our spirits from their urns.’ (90)

… The whole project became a reflection of contemporary Conservative political concerns. It was a reaction not only to artistic modernism, but also to political modernism. Uncomfortable with what he saw as the excesses of democracy, Hibbert looked to the age of Pericles to provide warnings against potential revolution. With citizenship came responsibility, and only vigilance and justice could protect democracy against anarchy and tyranny. By reading classical texts, such as the Eumenides, Hibbert felt that ‘the Democracy’ ¬ the people ¬ could come to understand the reasons for the rise of Athens and avoid its failings and political collapse. Although Hibbert regarded the promotion of classical art as an important feature of the Harris gallery, he considered the promotion of classical literature to be equally important. Free public libraries represented a great opportunity to provide citizens with a constitutional education and to equip them for full political citizenship.

Our Free Public Libraries are the machinery for disseminating, by means of translation, the spirit of the classical writers to every one who can read only his mother tongue. If the Democracy, which is to be, if it is not now already, the predominant power, could be made to understand by what means Athens rose to the summit of her unrivalled greatness, and what were the causes of the fall from her high estate, causes which lie upon the surface of her history, and which he who runs [sic: will?] may read, one cannot but think that it would be better for the future of this country. (96)’

[Author’s notes:]
87 J. Hibbert, ‘Memoir to Accompany the Design for the Sculptured Pediment, July 1885’ (Preston, 1885).
88 Cited in [J.Convey, ‘The Harris Free Public Library and Museum, Preston 1893-1993’ (Lancashire County Books, 1993)] p31.
90 Taken from Byron’s ‘Manfred’.
96 To some modern scholars this is somewhat ironic as many view Pericles as a tyrannical imperialist and demagogue. See, for example, P.Green, ‘The Shadow of the Parthenon’ (Oakland, Calif., 1972), 24-32.

Source
‘High Culture and Tall Chimneys. Art Institutions and Urban Society in Lancashire, 1780-1914’, by James Moore, 2018, MUP, p234-243.

---