Besides the proceeds of the systematic researches enumerated above,
the collection of sculpture has been frequently increased during the
present century with the specimens collected by private travellers in
the East. Thus in 1818, H. Gally Knight (1784-1846), an antiquarian
and writer on the history of architecture, with N. Fazakerly,
presented a statue from Athens.[34] In 1820, J. P. Gandy Deering
(1787-1850), an architect who had taken part in the Dilettanti
Expedition to Ionia of 1811, presented sculptures that he had
discovered at Rhamnus in Attica.[35] In 1839, Colonel W. M. Leake, an
eminent traveller and topographer (1777-1860), presented several Greek
sculptures.[36] A small collection of reliefs, and of architectural
fragments from Athens and elsewhere, was purchased from H. W. Inwood,
the author of a treatise on the Erechtheion.
In 1861, the fifth Earl of Aberdeen presented a collection which had
been formed in Greece in 1801 by George, fourth Earl of Aberdeen, a
connoisseur, known to his contemporaries as "Athenian Aberdeen."[37]
In 1864 a collection of sculptures was purchased which had been formed
by Percy Clinton Sydney Smythe, sixth Viscount Strangford (1783-1855),
formerly Ambassador to the Porte, and which included the "Strangford
Apollo."[38]
Amongst purchases that have taken place from time to time we may also
mention that of the Apollo[39] from the collection of the Comte de
Choiseul-Gouffier in 1818. In 1864 several Græco-Roman sculptures[40]
were purchased from the Farnese Collection at Rome. The museum of the
Duc de Blacas, purchased in 1867, contained the head of Asclepios
from Melos, and the relief discovered at the same time.[41] For
the numerous cases not here mentioned in which sculptures have been
acquired by donation or bequest, the reader is referred to the pages
of the catalogue.
Finally, it may be observed that not a few sculptures in the British
Museum have been found under peculiar circumstances in this country.
Such specimens have been brought to England by travellers, whose
collections have afterwards been broken up, lost or neglected, and
have been rescued by chance from warehouses, gardens, or masons'
yards.[42]
1: For the history of the collections in the British Museum, see
Edwards, _Lives of the Founders of the British Museum_;
Michaelis, _Ancient Marbles in Great Britain_, introduction.
2: There is a portrait of Sloane in the Mediæval Room, and a bust
by Roubiliac in the Ceramic Gallery.
3: The entries in the Sloane Catalogue are:--"218. A vase of red
and grey marble with green veins, with a cover from the Earl of
Arundel's Collections. 222. A busto of Tully (?) when young.--Arundel.
223. A small Venus (?).--Arundel."
4: Michaelis, _Ancient Marbles_, p. 6.
5: _Mus. Marbles_, II., pl. 39.
6: There is a bust of Mead by Roubiliac in the Ceramic Gallery.
7: _Mus. Meadianum_, Pars altera, p. 219.
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