CATHEDRAL HISTORY
The Great Mosaic Controversy Peter Howell and Patrick Rogers In his biography of Cardinal Vaughan, founder of the Cathedral, J C SneadCox wrote: ‘in the last letter he ever wrote … the Cardinal begged his Vicar General to try to see that the affairs of the Cathedral should be controlled by a consultative committee of priests and laymen, and so saved from the weakness or impulses of any single individual’. Such a committee had been suggested to Vaughan in 1899 by Fr Thomas Bridgett to advise on mosaic decoration; he thought it should consist principally of priests, but also of ‘outsiders’. He said that Charles Napier Hemy ARA, the only Catholic in the Royal Academy (and an old friend of J F Bentley, the Cathedral architect) would be glad to serve. The Cardinal duly asked Hemy to a meeting, along with John Singer Sargent, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Edwin Austin Abbey and Hubert Herkomer. Bentley had recommended W C Symons. The result was not a success, as Vaughan merely tried to persuade those present to approve his proposal to commission Professor Ludwig Seitz, a German artist living in Rome; but they ‘pronounced … an unanimous verdict on the absolute unsuitability of his style for the Cathedral’. This debacle many have influenced Vaughan’s successor, Cardinal Francis Bourne, who recorded in 1934 that it had often been suggested to him that he should form a committee, ‘but I soon came to see that, were any such committee formed, I should be placed in front of clamant, loudvoiced, contradictory opinions, and have thrust upon me the unenviable task of deciding between them’. He therefore made up his mind to study the matter of mosaics himself, and ‘to seek individual advice from the best sources at home and abroad’. It was fortunate that in his earlier years his Cathedral architect was Bentley’s former assistant, John Marshall.
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Eric Newton’s design for the mosaics of the Choir Apse
The story is well known of how he persuaded Eric Gill to undertake the Stations of the Cross, using the argument that otherwise the Cardinal might give the job to someone unsuitable. However, Laurence Shattock, who succeeded Marshall in 1927, was much more inclined to go along with his employer, and had a much less sure taste (though perhaps Edward Hutton went rather far in denouncing him as an ‘incompetent jerrybuilder’). Bourne’s attitude was further influenced by the business over the tympanum over the great west door. A very small-scale sketch by Bentley existed, on his elevational drawing, but an artist was needed to make a full-scale design. Before Vaughan’s death in 1903 designs were received from Seitz, W C Symons, Frank Brangwyn and Robert Anning Bell. In 1907 Marshall ‘worked up’ Bentley’s sketch and the commission was given to Anning Bell. The mosaic was completed in 1916. Bourne, who referred to Anning Bell in 1934 (without naming him) as ‘a distinguished non-Catholic artist’,
claimed that Anning Bell had paid little attention to his wishes, and ‘departed from such indications as Mr Bentley had left’ and that ‘the result was the greatest disappointment which I have received in connection with the work of the Cathedral’. Bourne therefore looked for a Catholic artist, and found one in Gilbert Pownall, who had exhibited at the Royal Academy since 1908, and had been chosen to paint Bourne’s portrait for the 20th anniversary of his holding the archbishopric in 1923. In 1928 Bourne conceived the idea of setting up a mosaic school at the Cathedral, both to produce new mosaics and to care for the existing ones. This was done, with Pownall in charge, in 1930. Bourne himself revisited Monreale and Palermo to see the famous mosaics there in 1931. Between 1930 and 1935 Pownall carried out the mosaics in the vault of the Lady Chapel, and also the huge tympanum above the high altar. This was bound to clash wit the hanging rood, and so late in 1933 the rood was taken down and fixed to the wall at the west end of the north aisle, Oremus
March 2020
