Bernard Ashmole

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Bernard Ashmole (born June 22, 1894 in Ilford, Essex ; died February 25, 1988 in Peebles , Scotland ) was a British classical archaeologist .

Bernhard Ashmole was the son of auctioneer William Ashmole and Sarah Caroline Wharton Tivers. He is a descendant of Elias Ashmole , after whom the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford is named. After attending the Forest School in 1903–1911, he moved to Hertford College in Oxford, where he graduated in 1913. In World War I he was during the Battle of the Somme severely wounded, rose to captain and received the Military Cross . After returning to Oxford, he studied Classical Archeology with Percy Gardner and John D. Beazley . He graduated in 1923 with a Bachelor of Letters and took up a position as second curator of the coin collection at the Ashmolean Museum. In 1920 he had married Dorothy De Peyer.

In 1925 he was appointed director of the British School at Rome , tasked with restoring the school's reputation, which had been battered by his predecessor Thomas Ashby and second director Eugénie Strong . During this time he mainly worked on the catalog of sculptures in the Conservator's Palace . At the same time, he established close ties to sculptors and modern architects at the British School and developed a penchant for modern architecture, which is now a listed building and in 1929 by the architects Amyas Douglas Connell (1901-1980) and Basil Robert Ward (1902-1976 ) house designed by Ashmoles in Amersham-on-the-Hill, Buckinghamshire .

In 1928 Ashmole followed a call as Yates Professor of Classical Art and Archeology at the University of London . With Beazley he first worked on the Greek Art chapter for the second edition of Cambridge Ancient History , he on sculpture, Beazley on vase painting . Both contributions were of such general importance that they were published again in 1932 as a single publication. After the Elgin Marbles were stripped of their original surface in a radical cleaning process by employees of the British Museum in London in 1938, Ashmole was entrusted with the position of curator of the museum's collection of Greek and Roman antiquities in addition to his professorship in response to the associated scandal ( Keeper of Greek and Roman Antiquities ); an office that he held largely on an honorary basis, as he continued to receive his salary from the university obligations that he also fulfilled. Thanks to his knowledge of people, the young employees of the department, Martin Robertson and Denys Haynes , were able to demonstrate their skills again.

During World War II , Ashmole served again in the British Army, this time in the Air Force, and received another war award with the Hellenic Flying Cross . In 1945 he was discharged from the Royal Air Force as Wing Commander . Ashmole gave up his chair in London in 1948 in order to devote himself entirely to the reorganization of the British Museum. In 1956 he followed Beazley's successor to Oxford as Lincoln Professor of Classical Archeology and Art , for which he also gave up his position at the British Museum. In 1961 he became the first Geddes Harrower Professor of Greek Art and Archeology at the University of Aberdeen , where he stayed until 1963. In 1964 he was a visiting professor at Yale University and lectured at the University of Cincinnati and in 1968 at New York University . He advised the billionaire J. Paul Getty on the purchase of antiques for his museum , the first two volumes of the museum journal were dedicated to him. Ashmole was already active as a consultant in 1936, when he assisted Josef von Sternberg with the filming of the film "I, Claudius" with Charles Laughton .

In 1938 he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy .

Ashmole's work, especially on Greek sculpture, has always been based on practical questions. The extraction and transport of materials, the processing techniques used by Greek artists and architects were his focus, and he was one of the first to develop the ability to unmask forgeries based on such features alone.

Fonts

  • with John Beazley: Greek Sculpture & Painting to the End of the Hellenistic period . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1932.
  • Late Archaic and Early Classical Greek Sculpture in Sicily and South Italy . H. Milford, London 1934 (reprint of the Proceedings of the British Academy . Volume 20).
  • The Classical Ideal in Greek Sculpture. Lectures in Memory of Louise Taft Semple . University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati 1964.
  • Architect and Sculptor in Classical Greece. Wrightsman Lectures . New York University Press, New York 1972.
  • Classical Antiquities from Private Collections in Great Britain: a Loan Exhibition in Aid of the Ashmole Archive . Sotheby's, London 1986.

literature

Web links

Remarks

  1. ^ Deceased Fellows. British Academy, accessed April 30, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Ashmole, Bernard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British Classical Archaeologist
DATE OF BIRTH June 22, 1894
PLACE OF BIRTH Ilford
DATE OF DEATH February 25, 1988
Place of death Peebles (Scotland)