Antiquaries in the Age of Romanticism: 1789-1851 - Queen Mary ...

est, for the Tapestry remained inaccessible to the English for by 1814 the Continent had been
largely closed to the British for over twenty years. Impatience and curiosity had been rising
steadily in many sections of society. Paris, despite being the enemy, exerted a fascination. It was
admired as a source of fashion and cultural brilliance, the capital of the most powerful nation in
Europe and now the depository of many of its greatest art treasures.
Among antiquaries the Bayeux Tapestry was one focus of interest. The other, even
greater, was Gothic architecture. Not only had it been widely and deeply investigated over the
previous decades, the question of its origins, whether in England, France or Germany was hotly
contested but the debate was difficult to conclude without the opportunity to compare examples
at first hand. The brief Peace of Amiens from 1802-3 permitted some cross-Channel exchanges,
and was probably the spur for the discussion of the Bayeux Tapestry in the Gentleman’s
Magazine. A more observant traveller on that occasion, however, was George Whittington, who
had managed to make a tour of France and Italy in the company of George Hamilton Gordon, 4 th
Earl of Aberdeen. Whittington, who died in 1807 at the age of twenty-six, wrote an important
treatise based on his tour, An Historical Survey of the Ecclesiastical Antiquities of France; with a
view to illustrate the rise and progress of Gothic architecture in Europe. It was seen through the
press by Aberdeen in 1809.
If the book was not quite on the scale that the title suggested, having been left
incomplete at Whittington’s death, it displayed an analytical power and breadth that would surely
have made the author a rival to Robert Willis had he lived. Arguing that the Gothic should be
defined by more than the pointed arch and analyzing by eye and by comparison with surviving
documents half a dozen of the most important Gothic churches of Paris, Rheims and Amiens,
Whittington deduced that the Gothic should properly be said to derive from Abbot Suger’s
alterations to the chevet of St Denis in 1140. This conclusion, which all subsequent research has
supported, directly contradicted Carter, Milner and, as Aberdeen pointed out in the Preface, the
official opinion of the Society of Antiquaries, all of whom held that Gothic was English.
Whittington was not an antiquary indeed he moved in gentlemanly circles where such pursuits
were regarded as somewhat infra dig. His friend the Earl, Byron’s cousin, ‘Athenian’
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