Viewing Byzantium through Arts & Crafts Eyes: From Greece to Sudan, lecture by Robin Cormack (Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London), Dumbarton Oaks and Zoom, February 6, 2025, 6:00 pm
This presentation focuses on changing views of Byzantine art and architecture from the late 19th century onwards. It is in two parts. The first looks at the methodology of a group of British Arts & Crafts young architects who recorded monuments in Greece between 1889 and 1912, and especially it emphasises the importance of the work of Robert Weir Schultz (1860–1951). Under the influence of William Morris and John Ruskin, they saw Byzantium as a culture which believed in craftmanship which stressed the assets of materials and the value of simplicity, utility, and beauty. They systematically travelled through Greece as well as Constantinople and recorded in drawings and photographs the state of the materials at that time. Their aim was to meticulously illustrate that Byzantium conformed with Arts & Crafts ideals, and they covered architecture, sculpture and mosaics.
The second part covers some of the mature works of these architects and asks how they interpreted Byzantium through their own buildings. Their commissions covered architecture in New Delhi, Canada, and Khartoum, and the focus will be on the Anglican cathedral at Khartoum, the capital of Anglo-Egyptian Sudan from 1898 until 1956. The church commissioned Weir Shultz specifically as a Byzantinist to design and built the cathedral between 1906 and 1912. The aim is to show how his viewing of the Byzantine features of his holistic concept had changed from mere recording to creative imagination.
Robin Cormack is Emeritus Professor in the History of Art at the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London.
Advance registration required.