17

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.

16 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,

over the tower entrance. In 1934 work began on the mosaics of the choir apse, after Pownall’s model of the design had been put on view in the Cathedral for comment. The only recorded reaction was the negative one of the 10-year old Aelred Bartlett, which caused Cardinal Bourne to tell his father that the boy should have his bottom smacked.

Bourne died on 1 January 1935, and on 29 April Arthur Hinsley was enthroned as Archbishop. Within a few months he was confronted by a strong protest about the quality of the recent mosaics, combined with a recommendation that a committee should be appointed. The organiser of the protest was Edward Hutton, well-known for his books on Italy, and later to be the designer of the floor of St Paul’s Chapel (completed in 1940). Francis Bartlett described him as ‘a great swell’. The memorandum was signed by 31 people, including Sir William Llewelyn, President of the Royal Academy; Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, President of the RIBA; Kenneth Clark, Director of the National Gallery; Eric Maclagan, Director of the V & A; H S Goodhart-Rendel, architect and Slade Professor of Art at Oxford; John Rothenstein, Director of the Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield; and artists and architects who included Charles Holden, Sir William Reid Dick, Sir William Rothenstein, Gerald Moira, Glyn Philpot, Eric Gill, F L Griggs, Peter Anson and Geoffrey Webb.

On 4 September Cardinal Hinsley wrote to thank Hutton and his fellow signatories, writing: ‘I feel strongly that there ought to be some Commission of Experts to carry out Bentley’s ideas in Westminster Cathedral … There can be no doubt that the Cathedral cannot be allowed to be the happy hunting ground for amateur experimentalists’. On 2 October the Cardinal told the Provost of the Chapter privately that work on the apse should be suspended, not just on the grounds of ‘the agitation among the artists and others’, but because of the need of money for schools, and the state of relations with Italy, from where the materials for mosaics came; he also

asked for the Chapter’s views on the setting up of ‘a small commission of experts’ to advise him.

On 13 September Mgr Valentine Elwes, the Cardinal’s Secretary, told Hutton that work on the apse was likely to be suspended, but no committee would be formed until work was resumed ‘perhaps many years hence’. Hutton was growing impatient, and on 29 November he threatened Mgr Elwes (who was sympathetic) that, if work did not stop, he would send the memorandum to The Times. As a result, the Cardinal ordered that it should stop the next day. This was announced in the Press in early December. Hinsley then asked Hutton and his colleagues to suggest names for a committee, which he did. He was also concerned about ‘the delicate question of discharging workmen and artists not engaged by me’, while Pownall himself was ‘much disturbed’, as his commission had been for three years. He threatened to sue the Archbishop for breach of contract, and in October 1936 was paid £2,000 in settlement out of court. The partly executed mosaics were taken down in the same month.

Once this business was settled, Cardinal Hinsley felt able to set up the committee. It consisted of Mgr Canon Jackman of Holy Rood, Watford; the Rev Lionel Smith of Kingsbury; F K Griggs RA (best known as an etcher); Henry Harris (a Trustee of the National Gallery); and Professor E W Tristram (the leading expert on medieval wallpaintings – he later designed the floor of St Joseph’s Chapel). Griggs and Harris had both signed Hutton’s memorandum. Hutton himself did not want to be a member, but continued to pull strings in the background. The press notice of October 1936 stated that: ‘the committee will advise regarding all designs and be empowered to watch over their execution. They will also give their counsel on questions of the wellbeing of the fabric’.

Eric Gill had been persuaded to sign Hutton’s memorandum by Griggs. He had strong views on the advice the Cardinal should be given on the Cathedral’s decoration: ‘I only hope that when the time comes it will be made clear to him that the carrying out of Bentley’s ideas is probably the one thing which should not be done. I think it would be generally admitted that it would be frightful if the whole Cathedral were decorated in opus sectile, and that seems to have been Bentley’s intention.’ Gill was exaggerating, but it needs to be remembered that it had indeed been Bentley’s intention that the Stations of the Cross should be of opus sectile. In 1937 Griggs was urging Gill to design new mosaics for the apse. He had his doubts, but found the offer tempting. He concluded that it would be necessary: ‘to keep the design in the simplest or most geometrical terms, including a very grand row of letters … How beautiful the cathedral would look whitewashed.’

On the recommendation of the new committee, the rood was rehung in its original position in 1937, and the following year the committee decided to remove Pownall’s tympanum mosaic over the sanctuary (called by Hutton ‘the blue horror’). Hinsley made it a condition that the original workmen should do the job. In the same year Sir Giles Gilbert Scott was consulted, and recommended that: ‘simplicity was the key’ to its replacement, with ‘no sharp contrasts’. In 1939 Gill suggested subjects – the Palm Sunday Procession, and the Carrying of the Cross, with the Chalice with the Precious Blood flowing in the centre – but his design was rejected, and he died the next year. Little is known about the proceedings of Hinsley’s committee, although Fr Smith, its secretary, later recalled that: ‘the backwoods party (Harris and Tristram) vetoed everything’. A scheme approved by the committee in 1940 (though opposed by Griggs and – offstage – by Hutton), to take down the cipollino marble from the nave piers and use it to line the north and south aisles, was only halted by the threat of bombing. The war also saved the tympanum mosaic over the sanctuary which remains in place, of course, to the present day. Peter Howell is a parishioner and member of the Art and Architecture Committee of long standing; the late Patrick Rogers was the Cathedral Historian.