Fitzwilliam Museum

17 May

Known for its grandeur and astonishingly large collection this museum can be found in the heart of Cambridge

Housing a collection so large its more than five million works of art, artefacts and specimens together span across four and a half billion years. With wonderful local folklore about some its permanent members and free access to all visitors. Now that’s the best kind of museum.

Fitzwilliam the person

The Fitzwilliam Museum can be found in the city of Cambridge in eastern England. Which you already probably know is most famous for being the home of the University of Cambridge.

The museum was created when Richard, VII Viscount Fitzwilliam of Merrion bequeathed his collection to the University of Cambridge when he died in 1816. Viscount Fitzwilliam was an alumnus of Trinity Hall and he really felt that the University should have a museum of its own. And so on top of his bequeathment he added £100 000 pounds. This extra money was meant to be used to build an unforgettable monument which would “be above all a place of learning as well as one of the most magnificent galleries of its day”. It was Fitzwilliam’s aim to further “the increase of learning and other great objects of that noble foundation”.

With his bequest, Fitzwilliam had 144 pictures and he filled over 500 folio albums with engravings. The man was quite the collector and his collection even included a series of etchings by Rembrandt that was unsurpassed in England at the time. Fitzwilliam had also managed to find 130 medieval manuscripts and a collection of autographed music by their musicians, among which was Handel and Purcell.

It was important to get this collection out there and open to the public. The collection was originally housed in the old Perse Grammar School in the Free School Lane. In 1842, the collection was moved to the east rooms of, what was at the time, the University Library. They weren’t there long though, and in 1848, they made their permanent home in their current building on Trumpington Street, where you can see them today.

The collection grows

The building was bought from Peterhouse College in 1821 for £8 500. What. A. Steal. But nothing really happened with the building for about 10 years. Until the trustees of Perse School kind of got sick of having this massive pile of artworks taking up room, and so in 1834, they requested for the collection to be removed, and that was when things started getting into gear.

It was organised for a tender to be advertised in the newspapers, 27 architects saw it and decided to send in plans. Among the designs was everything from an antique temple to a massive gothic church, complete with its own tower. But it was the elegant neo-classical design from George Basevi that got him the job.

The area became a construction site in 1837, and the foundation stone was laid by Gilbert Ainslie, who was obviously Master of Pembroke and Vice-Chancellor of the University. Sadly, Basevi passed away before the construction was complete and so it was Charles Robert Cockerell who took over in October of 1845. But, as can happen to the best of us, a lack of funds suspended construction in 1847 and didn’t start up again until 1870, this time with Edward M. Barry at the helm. Now that’s a long time to be on a break.

Barry had his own ideas about how the building was going to look and so took it upon himself to redesign the entrance hall, resulting in the two staircases you can see today leading up to the first floor. The building as a whole was finally completed in 1875 at a total cost of £115 000.

The Museum

So, now let’s talk a little bit about the building itself; Basevi designed the main northern block to have two stories and be made of Portland Stone. The main building stands back from the road behind a balustrade and the front has a portico of Corinthian columns. The columns are flanked by square pillars called loggias. The loggias and columns support a cornice and pediment, which is extensively decorated. The whole look was designed by Sir Charles Eastlake and executed by W.G. Nicholl.

The Fitzwilliam Museum didn’t properly open until 1848, a whole 32 years after Fitzwilliam’s original bequest. And when it did open it was only open to members of the University, but the public were able to come and have a glance around three days a week.

Throughout its life, the museum has gone through 13 directors and each have overseen additions to the building and collection.

The building now occupies over double the original lay out with the first major addition being in 1821. This was when the Museum’s first great benefactor, Charles Brinkley Marley died in 1912 and bequest his personal collection of a variety of objects to the Museum. The objects that he had found throughout the world included: illuminated manuscripts, paintings, prints, drawings, rare books, precious bindings, European and Oriental pottery and weapons, bronzes, ivories, jewellery, Japanese lacquer and netsuke, furniture, carpets and tapestries, as well as £80 000 to extend the building so that it would all fit. But, as seems to happen when things are finally on the up and up, the First World War broke out and the expansion had to be delayed.

Further extensions were added in 1931, ’36, ’66 and ’75, with the latest extension being in 2004, this saw the Courtyard Development adding conservation studios, exhibition spaces and modern visitor facilities.

And then along came the Hamilton Kerr Institute. The late Sir Hamilton Kerr, thought that the 1970s were a good time to gift an entire building to the museum. I suppose he had one lying around that he didn’t need. And because sometimes museum folk aren’t very imaginative, they named the building the Hamilton Kerr Institute, which you can find in Whittlesford, just outside of Cambridge. The Institute houses the Museum’s paintings conservation department and provides postgraduate training for conservators and research into conservation for paintings. And, as it turns out, the Hamilton Kerr Institute is one of the world’s foremost centres for teaching in the conversation of easel paintings. That’s actually pretty interesting.

The Lions

One of the first things you’ll see as you walk up to the Museum, apart from the massive front and amazing delicate stone work, is the Fitzwilliam Lions.

William G Nicholl, our old mate from the Corinthian columns and the decorative façade, was also commissioned by Basevi to create the four lions. He started work on the lions in 1839 and they were positioned outside the museum, where they remain to this very single day; two at the north steps and the other two at the south steps.

There is local folklore about the lions. The Enid Porter Collection has the full story, but here’s the basics of it: when the surrounding clocks, the Church of Our Lady and the English Martyrs’ clocks, when they strike at midnight, the Fitzwilliam lions rise from their plinths, they give themselves a big stretch and a yawn or two, and they head down to the street and grab a drink from the gutters just mere metres from where they sit. Sometimes they even go for a wander through the city, supposedly they’ve been seen as far as Hobson’s Conduit, which is a creek about an hour’s walk from the Museum. Some different versions of the folklore say that the lions enter the museum and because they’re magical they have the pleasure of walking through the walls instead of using the perfectly working doors, no doubt letting out a roar every now and then.

The story was inspiration for Michael Rosen when he wrote the poem from the perspective of the lions, titled The Listening Lions. Have a look under the ‘video’ heading on the right-hand side for a link to a video where the poet, Michael Rosen himself, reads out the poem the way it is meant to be heard. So click on over to there to hear about what the Lions have gotten up to over the centuries.

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