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

gouffre qu’on appelle Angleterre, où passent aujourd’hui tous nos objets d’arts.’ [To my great
regret I failed; I believe they have disappeared into the gulf called England where all our works
of art now disappear]. 166 For their part the English emphasised the fact that much of what they
bought had been already removed from its original setting and might otherwise have been
destroyed. Dawson Turner’s observations on contrasting English and French attitudes in 1815
cast neither nation in a flattering light but they are revealing. Arriving at the church of
Molineaux he remarked that while the building was derelict the stained glass windows were
intact:
Either the antiquaries in France are more honest than in England, or they want taste, or objects of this kind do not
find a ready market. We know too well how many an English church, albeit well guarded by the churchwardens and
the parson, has seen its windows despoiled of every shield, and saint, and motto; and we also know full well, by
whom, and for whom, such ravages are committed. In France on the contrary, where painted glass still fills the
windows of sacred buildings, now employed for the meanest purposes, or wholly deserted, no one will even take the
trouble of carrying it away; and the storied panes are left, as derelict utterly without value. 167
As Turner implied it was the antiquaries, who should have known better, who behaved
worst. At Jumièges the statues were sold off by the new owner to Englishmen who, as Langlois
put it, ‘poussèrent si loin la spoliation, que si l’on ne s’y fût enfin opposé, on ne trouverait pas
aujourd’hui dans Jumièges un seul fleuron de chapiteau’. [took the plundering so far that unless
it had eventually been put a stop to there would not now be at Jumièges a single crocket of a
capital left.]. 168 He presumably did not know that his acquaintance A C Pugin, to whom he had
been so helpful, had, with his pupils been responsible for sawing off and removing one whole
capital. 169 At Caen the ducal palace had been virtually stripped of its encaustic tile floor by the
time Dawson Turner saw it and asked Cotman to include some of the remaining fragments in his
illustration. The Abbé de la Rue had happily collected an entire set of tiles, preserving them from
the workmen who ‘after the abbey was sold… [broke] them with their pick-axes’. 170 Four years
after Turner’s Tour was published the twelve-year old A W N Pugin noted excitedly in his
166
Langlois, Essai Historique et descriptif sur la penture sur verre ancienne et moderne, pp. 100-101.
167
Turner, A Tour in Normandy, 2, p.102.
168
Langlois, Les Enervés de Jumièges, p.14.
169
Ferrey, Recollections of Pugin, p.20
170
Turner, A Tour in Normandy, 2, p.206.
155