An ancient Greek water pot (hydria) might not immediately seem at home in an archive of British art, but the history of this hydria, now in the National Trust property Montacute House in Somerset, is entwined with British art collecting.
This hydria was made c. 360-350 BC in Apulia, Italy. At the time, the area, particularly the coast, was populated with Greek colonies, with the maker of this vase living and working among them. Of more interest here, however, is the vase’s history in Britain. Montacute House, an Elizabethan Renaissance country house, was acquired by the National Trust in 1931. By then, its rooms were ‘virtually empty of contents’ after several major sales, notably in 1834 and 1895.[1] When the house opened in to the public in 1932, it was described as an ‘empty and rather embarrassing white elephant’.[2] Consequently, after WWII, national appeals were established to furnish the house with gifts and loans of furniture and art predating 1700, acquired in order to restore the property’s historic character.[3]
There are no tangible records of when this vase arrived at Montacute, but it was likely either donated following an appeal or was one of the few items remaining in the house when acquired by the National Trust. Either way, this shows how appropriate ancient Greek vases were considered to be in British country houses. Following William Hamilton (1730-1803)’s sale of his first ancient Greek vase collection to the British Museum in 1771, there had been a huge increase in Greek vase collecting amongst the British elite. Like other goods acquired to decorate country houses, these were intended to demonstrate to their peers the owner’s wealth and taste, and, in this case, their Classical education. The visual language of the British country house was, of course, hardly British at all.[4]
Importantly, there are several modern inscriptions on the hydria’s underside. Most interesting of these is ‘Hydria of a Nolan Ware / Sacrifice to Pomona’, with the inscription continuing on the other side: ‘S. Bodd……..n… J…. Col….’, written in pencil. The latter part seems to refer to the vase’s previous collection but it is unfortunately rubbed and its meaning is, frustratingly, just out of reach.
The designation of this painting as a ‘sacrifice to Pomona,’ though an intriguing idea, is incorrect. Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit trees, gardens, and orchards, had no direct equivalent in the ancient Greek pantheon and would have been unknown to the vase’s Greek maker. It seems the English owner approached this vase through a Roman lens, presumably thinking that because the vase had been found in Italy, it had been made by Romans. From this flawed standpoint, he assumed the depiction was a sacrifice to Pomona because of the abundant fruits in and above the woman’s hands, apparently thinking she was bringing these fruits to the large white altar in the centre. In Western art from the fourteenth century AD onwards, Pomona herself was often depicted holding a platter or basket of fruit, including in British artist William Hamilton’s (1751-1801) Vertumnus and Pomona (c. 1789; Royal Academy). Perhaps, then, it made sense to this vase’s owner for Pomona’s worshippers to appear in the same way. That this scene specifically recalled Pomona and her worship to the modern owner probably stemmed from his familiarity with Roman writers like Ovid, who discussed Pomona in Book 14 of his Metamorphoses,[5] as well as his familiarity with her image in Western art. His geographically and chronologically biased approach to the vase, as well as his text-focused Classical education, led him to miss the visual clues in this vase-painting which point to the scene’s actual identity: the nude youth to the right of the painting is an athlete holding a strigil, who, with the woman, is bringing offerings to an altar to ensure his good performance in his sport.
This ancient Greek vase therefore demonstrates just one facet of global art collecting for the British country house, with its intriguing inscription showing how the visual and educational culture surrounding British art collectors could – and still does – influence their interpretation of the imagery before them.
Bibliography
Cooper, Tarnya. (2019). ‘A World in a House,’ National Trust Historic Houses & Collections Annual 2019: Taste, Trade, and Europe: 6-9.
Moore, Jo. (2002). ‘An empty and rather embarrassing white elephant’: the re-furnishing of Montacute House’, Apollo Vol. 155 (Iss. 482): 17-22.
Moore, Jo and Cooper, Nicholas. (2018). Montacute House: National Trust Guidebook. Rotherham: National Trust.
Zetland, Lord. (1945). The Times, 11th April 1945. Accessed via the British Newspaper Archive with funding from the British Art Network Emerging Curators Group.
