CATHEDRAL HISTORY
Arguments and Achievements Peter and Patrick continue their account of the Cathedral’s Art Committee and its various contributions. Peter Howell and Patrick Rogers
In 1943 Cardinal Hinsley was succeeded by Bernard Griffin, who apparently disliked committees, and the former Art Committee, which had lapsed with the onset of war, was not recalled. Before long things were going wrong again with regard to the Cathedral decoration, to such an extent that Edward Hutton organised another letter of protest. Published in The Times on 17 November 1853, the letter was signed by some of the signatories of the 1935 protest – Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, Kenneth Clark and John Rothenstein – together with Philip Hendy, Graham Greene, Henry Moore and John Pope-Hennessy. The mosaics were still a source of complaint, and there were also new ones. Hutton was distressed by the marble lining of the walls of the galleries on either side of the sanctuary, which he felt: ‘destroyed the fine effect’ of Bentley’s arcades. Francis Bartlett later described it as ‘formica marble’. Worse still, the column supporting the arcade across the north transept had been removed in 1949 and replaced with a steel girder, because the Administrator, Mgr Collingwood, thought that it got in the way of processions. In December 1953 the signatories of the letter, which had urged the setting up of a committee on the model of Hinsley’s Art Committee, were invited to meet the Hierarchy at lunch. The new committee which resulted had as its members H S Goodhart-Rendel (who, as a former member, had declined to sign the letter), Sir John Rothenstein, the sculptor Arthur Pollen and Professor Thomas Bodkin. In January 1954 Collingwood was succeeded as Administrator by Mgr Gordon Wheeler, later to become Bishop of Leeds. 8
Collingwood's folly? The removal of the pillar in the north transept lasted for only a few years before its replacement, and led to the removal of Mgr Collingwood as Administrator
In February the transept column was retrieved from Messrs Fenning, marble merchants, and a scheme to replace the beautiful marble floor of the narthex was cancelled. The committee was then asked once again to consider replacing Pownall’s tympanum mosaic over the sanctuary. Designs had previously been put forward by Thomas Derrick, Eric Newton and Colin Gill, but Rothenstein and Pollen strongly urged an approach to Boris Anrep, who had been responsible in 1914 for the mosaics on the soffit over Cardinal Manning’s tomb in the crypt, and in 1924 for the Oliver Plunkett mosaic outside St Patrick’s Chapel. In October 1954 Griffin approved Anrep’s design, and gave £1,000 towards an appeal for the cost, estimated at over £26,000. Meanwhile, the replacement of John Trinick’s 1950 mosaic of St Thérèse of Lisieux in the south transept, also regarded as unworthy, was under consideration, and eventually Rothenstein’s suggestion that Giacomo Manzù should be asked
to replace it with a bronze relief was accepted. However, in March 1955 Griffin abandoned the proposal to replace Pownall’s tympanum mosaic, on the grounds that the public would not subscribe for a replacement. Anrep was offered the design of the Blessed Sacrament Chapel mosaics instead, finally completing these in 1962. During 1955 signs of disagreement appeared among the committee members. Wheeler and his SubAdministrator, Francis Bartlett, supported by Goodhart-Rendel and Bodkin, thought that Bentley’s designs should be used wherever they existed, but Rothenstein and Pollen were not so sure. Nevertheless, on the matter of the revetment of the nave with marble, they were won over. A suggestion that Stanley Spencer might design mosaics for the Baptistry alarmed Rothenstein, who thought Spencer ‘too keen on the audience’, and suggested Henry Moore instead. His idea that the Baptistry could be ‘like Matisse at Vence’ alarmed Wheeler and Bartlett in their turn. Oremus
April 2020
