Editing Elgin Marbles (section)

==Contemporary reaction{{anchor | Criticism by Elgin's contemporaries}}==

When, in 1807, Elgin put the first shipment of marbles on display in London<ref name="Jenkins 2016. p. 102">Jenkins (2016). p. 102</ref> they were "an instant success among many"<ref name="Casey22"/> who admired the sculptures and supported their arrival. The sculptor [[John Flaxman]] thought them superior to "the treasures of Italy",<ref name=":12">Jenkins (2016). pp. 102–104</ref> and Benjamin West called them "sublime specimens of the purest sculpture".<ref>William St Clair (1967). p. 167</ref> [[Henry Fuseli]] was enthusiastic, and his friend [[Benjamin Haydon]] became a tireless advocate for their importance.<ref>{{Cite book |last=St. Clair |first=William |title=Lord Elgin and the Marbles |publisher=Oxford |year=1967 |edition=1st |location=London |pages=169–172}}</ref> Classicist [[Richard Payne Knight]], however, declared they were Roman additions or the work of inferior craftsmen, and painter [[Ozias Humphry|Ozias Humphrey]] called them "a mass of ruins".<ref name=":12" />

[[File:Elgin Marbles 4.jpg|thumb|Western frieze, II, 2]]

[[Lord Byron]], a few years later, strongly objected to the removal of the marbles from Greece, denouncing Elgin as a vandal.<ref name="BritA2">Encyclopædia Britannica, ''The Acropolis'', p. 6/20, 2008, O.Ed.</ref> In his narrative poem ''[[Childe Harold's Pilgrimage]]'', published in 1812, he wrote in relation to the Parthenon:<ref>{{cite news |date=14 July 2014 |title=The story of the Elgin Marbles |newspaper=International Herald Tribune |url=http://www.elginism.com/20040720/90/ |url-status=dead |access-date=25 June 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111025153529/http://www.elginism.com/20040720/90/ |archive-date=25 October 2011}}</ref>

{{poemquote|Dull is the eye that will not weep to see
Thy walls defaced, thy mouldering shrines removed
By British hands, which it had best behoved
To guard those relics ne'er to be restored.
Curst be the hour when from their isle they roved,
And once again thy hapless bosom gored,
And snatch'd thy shrinking gods to northern climes abhorred!}}

Byron was not the only one to protest against the removal at the time. [[Sir John Newport, 1st Baronet|Sir John Newport]] said:<ref name="newsweek stones22">{{cite magazine |title=Romancing the Stones |url=http://www.newsweek.com/id/200852 |magazine=Newsweek |access-date=25 June 2009}}</ref>{{blockquote|The Honourable Lord has taken advantage of the most unjustifiable means and has committed the most flagrant pillages. It was, it seems, fatal that a representative of our country loot those objects that the Turks and other barbarians had considered sacred.}}[[Edward Daniel Clarke]] witnessed the removal of the metopes and called the action a "spoliation", writing that "thus the form of the temple has sustained a greater injury than it had already experienced from the Venetian artillery", and that "neither was there a workman employed in the undertaking{{nbsp}}... who did not express his concern that such havoc should be deemed necessary, after moulds and casts had been already made of all the sculpture which it was designed to remove."<ref name="Edward Daniel Clarke 1818 223ff2"/> When Sir [[Francis Ronalds]] visited Athens and [[Giovanni Battista Lusieri]] in 1820, he wrote that "If Lord Elgin had possessed real taste in lieu of a covetous spirit he would have done just the reverse of what he has, he would have removed the rubbish and left the antiquities."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Ronalds |first=B.F. |title=Sir Francis Ronalds: Father of the Electric Telegraph |publisher=Imperial College Press |year=2016 |isbn=978-1-78326-917-4 |location=London |page=60}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Sir Francis Ronalds' Travel Journal: Athens |url=http://www.sirfrancisronalds.co.uk/athens.html |access-date=22 February 2018 |website=Sir Francis Ronalds and his Family}}</ref>

[[File:Temporary Elgin Room at the Museum in 1819.jpg|thumb|upright=1.25|A portrait depicting the Elgin Marbles in a temporary Elgin Room at the [[British Museum]] surrounded by museum staff, a trustee and visitors, 1819]]
In 1810, Elgin published a defence of his actions, in which he argued that he had only decided to remove the marbles when he realised that they were not being cared for by Ottoman officials and were in danger of falling into the hands of [[Napoleon]]'s army.<ref>St Clair (1967). p. 182</ref><ref name="BritB2">''Encyclopædia Britannica'', "Elgin Marbles", 2008, online ed.</ref>

[[Felicia Hemans]] supported the purchase of the marbles and in her ''Modern Greece: A Poem'' (1817), defied Byron with the question:
{{poemquote|And who may grieve that, rescued from their hands,
Spoilers of excellence and foes of art,
Thy relics, Athens! borne to other lands
Claim homage still to thee from every heart?}}

and quoted Haydon and other defenders of their accessibility in her notes.<ref>''Modern Greece'', London 1817, [https://books.google.com/books?id=A1QVAAAAQAAJ pp. 45, 65–66]</ref>

[[Johann Wolfgang von Goethe|Goethe]] thought the British government's decision to buy the marbles would herald "a new age of great art".<ref name=":0" /> The marbles went on public display in a temporary room of the British Museum in 1817 and soon broke attendance records for the museum.<ref>Jenkins (2016). p. 110</ref> [[John Keats]] visited the British Museum in 1817, recording his feelings in the [[sonnet]] titled "On Seeing the Elgin Marbles". Some lines of his "[[Ode on a Grecian Urn]]" are also thought to have been inspired by his visit to the Elgin Marbles.<ref name=":0">Beard (2002) p. 16</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Chamberlain |first=Tim |date=2005 |title=The Elusive Urn |url=https://www.academia.edu/1532559 |journal=The British Museum Magazine |issue=52 |pages=36–38}}</ref> [[William Wordsworth]] also viewed the marbles and commented favourably on their aesthetics in a letter to Haydon.<ref>{{Cite book |first=Andrew |last=Bennett |title=William Wordsworth in Context |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=2015 |page=304}}</ref>

The marbles were later displayed in the specially constructed Elgin Saloon (1832) and became the preferred models for academic training in fine arts. Plaster casts of the marbles were in high demand and were distributed to museums, private collectors and heads of state throughout the world.<ref name=":5">Jenkins (2016). p. 111</ref><ref name=":7">Beard (2002). pp. 16–18</ref> They were moved to the Duveen Gallery, named after [[Joseph Duveen, 1st Baron Duveen]], in 1939 where they continued to attract record attendances.<ref name="Casey22" />