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

esult, albeit unintentional, was that by presenting his collection as a history of art, Lenoir
brought the material artefacts that had been the subject matter of private antiquarian enquiry into
the public realm as a legitimate means of understanding history. However accidentally it came
about it was a development in keeping with the spirit of the age. The Musée was immensely
popular from the beginning.
Figure 24 Lenoir at St Denis
As Dawson Turner discovered it was also more rigorously organised than the Louvre, for
it was presented as a chronological account of French architecture and sculpture. Most visitors,
however, French or foreign, did not, could not, assess its contents simply in aesthetic terms. With
the passage of time, as the Terror receded, both Lenoir and his public accepted that the interest of
the collection was due in part to the associative qualities of objects which carried with them
something of the time and place from which they had been uprooted. What Lenoir offered in his
galleries and the extensive catalogue that accompanied them was not, in fact, pure chronology
but a narrative, however fragmentary. Reactions to the Musée accordingly varied depending on
the visitors’ receptiveness to a view of the past that was evocative as well as documentary; on
whether they wanted to engage in a reciprocal relationship with the collection or simply to study
and observe it. The contrasting reactions of George Whittington, classically educated fellow of
St John’s College, Cambridge and Dawson Turner, largely self-educated polymath and budding
antiquary, are revealing.
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