Finding a Ruskin portrait with family links and vivid Victorian colours at the Ashmolean

John Ruskin (1819-1900) by Sir John Everett Millais (1829-1896) in the ‘Colour Revolution’ exhibition in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Patrick Comerford

I have tried – but failed – during recent visits to Oxford, to search in the Ashmolean Museum for a Pre-Raphaelite portrait that inspired a late Victorian photograph of my grandfather.

The formal portrait of John Ruskin (1819-1900) by Sir John Everett Millais (1829-1896) has been held by the Ashmolean for the past ten years. But each time I went in search of it the painting was on loan to another exhibition. So, when I was in Oxford last week, I returned to the Ashmolean Museum to see this painting which is part of the current exhibition, ‘Colour Revolution: Victorian Art, Fashion & Design.’

Ruskin was an important figure in the Pre-Raphaelite circle in Oxford. His book The Stones of Venice was influential as I was developing my interests in architecture and later as I developed my interests in Venice. His portrait, painted by Milais 170 years ago in 1853, captures Ruskin in a style that fulfils Ruskin’s ideals.

But I also had family reasons for wanting to see this portrait. When my grandfather, Stephen Edward Comerford (1867-1921), was young and successful, he had his portrait taken in a way that presented him as a young Victorian man with confidence looking forward to the future.

I had always imagined that the photograph was taken in a Victorian photographer’s studio, but with the intent of creating the impression of an ideal rustic background, with a cascading waterfall, rocks, rich vegetation, and a clearing in a thicket. Stephen Comerford is dressed in a three-piece suit and wing-collar shirt, holding a walking cane in one hand and a hat in the other. But his shoes are well-made and highly-polished, so this is clearly a studio scene rather than a setting at the Powerscourt Waterfall near Enniskerry, Co Wicklow, or at a waterfall in Killarney, Co Kerry. It is certainly not in the Scottish Highlands.

It seems like a photograph that a man confident a full and successful career lay ahead of him would like to have taken. I only have a copy of the photograph, from the house in Terenure where my grandmother lived, rather than the original. So I have no idea of the original date of the photograph, or of the name of the photographer. When it was announced in 2013 that the Ashmolean had acquired Millais’s portrait of Ruskin, I realised that my grandfather’s photograph was modelled on this celebrated Pre-Raphaelite painting.

Stephen Edward Comerford (left) like a cut-out figure at a waterfall, and John Ruskin (right) in the portrait by John Everett Millais (Photomontage: Patrick Comerford)

This is the painting that led to the breakdown of Ruskin’s marriage, and until it was acquired by the Ashmolean it was ‘one of the most important Pre-Raphaelite paintings’ that had remained in private ownership.

The Ashmolean has such a rich collection of Pre-Raphaelite works because of the many connections members of the movement had with of Oxford. A number of them – including Edward Burne-Jones, William Morris, Alfred William Hunt and John Ruskin – studied at the University.

Ruskin left much of his collection, including his teaching collection, to the university. He was an undergraduate at Christ Church, Oxford, from 1836 to 1842, when he lived with his mother on High Street. His Modern Painters, published anonymously in 1843, was credited to him as ‘a graduate of Oxford’. His writings were highly influential and he became irrevocably associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, befriending Millais and Hunt, and then Rossetti, Siddal and Burne-Jones.

Ruskin was appointed Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford in 1869. He was critical of the teaching methods at the art schools of his day, and founded the School of Drawing in 1871.

When I set out in search of Ruskin’s portrait by Millais in the Ashmolean in September, I learn it has been on loan for some months to another exhibition. Instead, I spent an educational and enjoyable afternoon in Pre-Raphaelite Gallery, but shall have to return soon again to find the portrait that may have inspired the pose in that Victorian photograph of my grandfather.

‘Venice from the Porch of the Madonna della Salute (1835) by JMW Turner, lent by the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Thankfully, I found the portrait last week when I visited ‘Colour Revolution’, the Ashmolean’s autumn exhibition which presents a dazzling version of the Victorian world, surprisingly one of the most colourful periods in history.

Ruskin was one of the most influential writers on art and architecture in 19th century Britain, and strove to restore colour to its rightful importance in art. Since the Renaissance, colour had been considered by many as secondary to composition and draftsmanship.

Ruskin argued that colour was a God-given gift and should be embraced as it had been in mediaeval art. He believed the colours of the natural world could inspire and guide artists who should replicate them as truthfully as possible. ‘You ought to love colour, and to think nothing quite beautiful or perfect without it,’ he wrote in The Elements of Drawing in 1857.

Ruskin was a passionate defender of JMW Turner, and considered him one of the greatest colourists. Both Ruskin and Turner were profoundly influenced by the colours and patterned architecture of Venice. Ruskin also taught art at Oxford. His lectures and writing helped shape debates around colour and greatly influenced the Pre-Raphaelites.

This exhibition dispels the myth that the Victorian era was a dreary landscape of ‘dark satanic mills’ and cities choked with smog. Instead, it shows how developments in art, science and technology resulted in an explosion of colour that was embraced by artists, designers and regular people in the 19th century.

The exhibition reveals a spectacular and flamboyant array of artworks, costume and design that sprung from this ‘colour revolution’. It features 140 objects from international collections ranging from Ruskin’s exquisite studies, Turner’s and Whistler’s experiments with colour harmony, and elegant designs by William Morris and his company, to fashion, jewellery and homeware that enlivened the streets and homes of Victorian Britain and Europe.

The exhibition opens with an evocative object, encapsulating our dark preconceptions of the period: Queen Victoria’s mourning dress – she spent 40 years in black following the death of Prince Albert in 1861. But examples of Victorian fashion show people of the 19th century embracing the products of the Industrial Revolution, no more so than new aniline dyes. While the coal industry blackened Britain’s landscape, aniline, a by-product of coal-tar, introduced a rainbow of possibilities to Victorian wardrobes.

The display includes a purple dress, crinoline and shoes dyed with the first aniline colour, Mauvine, all retaining their shocking brilliance. As production increased, the price of dyes reduced, making bright colours available to the masses.

Although pigments had been manufactured for thousands of years, the term ‘synthetic’ is synonymous with the 19th century because of the scale and advances of chemical technology. It was an 18-year-old chemistry student, William Henry Perkin (1838-1907) who discovered Mauvine in 1856. This encouraged chemists across Europe to find more synthetic colours.

Perkin succeeded in 1867 in making alizarin, the active colorant of madder root, a traditional vegetable dye for reds, pinks and browns. Soon new anilines were being used to print postage stamps, make inks, pigments, paints, to colour paper and even food.

The Great Bookcase (1859-1862) was designed by William Burges and painted by 13 Pre-Raphaelite artists (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Advances such as these were celebrated in the International Exhibition in 1862, an important cultural event in the 19th century. It brought together examples of British, colonial and scientific products and it was the first time synthetic anilines were shown to an international audience. Two of the most fashionable aniline colours on display, vivid pinks - Magenta and Solferino – had been named after recent French victories over Austria in the 1859 Second Italian War of Independence.

The Ashmolean’s extraordinarily colourful Great Bookcase (1859-1862) was the centrepiece of the Exhibition’s Mediaeval Court. At three meters high, the bookcase echoes the polychrome porch of a Gothic cathedral, although its style is more eclectic.

The bookcase was designed by the architect William Burges (1827-1881), and it was painted by 13 promising young Pre-Raphaelite artists, including Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898) and Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882).

Analyses show that Burges and the artists used contemporary materials including aniline green.

‘Vivien’ (1863) by Frederick Sandys (1829-1904) … Sandys uses peacock feathers to highlight her role as a sexual enticer, appropriating the colourful plumage of the male (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Revivalist and Pre-Raphaelite artists were working in the context of rapid scientific progress and the popularisation of new scientific ideas by figures like Charles Darwin (1809-1882). His concept of natural selection and the use of colour in the animal kingdom led to particularly gruesome Victorian appetites for two of nature’s most beautiful animals, beetles and hummingbirds. Unlike the feathers of a peacock, whole bird and beetle bodies were incorporated into Victorian fashion and jewellery.

The jeweller Harry Emmanuel created coveted designs including a Hummingbird necklace (1865) made of seven decapitated emerald and ruby-topaz birds. There was such a hummingbird craze that in one week alone in 1888, 400,000 ‘skins’ were auctioned, and a further 370,000 in the following week.

In 1884, the Portuguese ambassador to London presented the Foreign Secretary, Lord Granville, with a piece of jewellery made of the bodies of 46 iridescent green South American weevils. Granville had these mounted on a tiara and necklace for his wife in 1885.

‘Minton Peacock’ designed by Paul Comolera for Minton & Co … majolica contained high traces of lead that poisoned many of the female workers in the Minton factory (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Colourful fashion had a human cost too: in 1862 a factory girl making artificial flowers for women’s headdresses died from poisoning. She was said to have vomited green slime and had green tinged eyeballs. The killer was the main ingredient of the new green dye – arsenic. The incident prompted a review of the use of green in fashion and homeware, and green wallpaper became known as ‘walls of death’.

Scandals such as this and the ever-growing use of colour in popular culture prompted discussions on colour theory and different colours’ moral qualities. The exhibition shows artists who had famously different attitudes. Ruskin believed artists should stick to the God-given colours of nature, while James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) disagreed entirely and followed a philosophy of ‘colour for colour’s sake’. His extravagant use of colour was made easier by the invention of collapsible metal paint tubes.

Certain ‘unnatural’ colours were embraced by the ‘Decadent’ movement – such as the dyed-green carnation sported by Oscar Wilde. Another Decadent favourite was yellow, epitomised by a series of French novels that had distinctive yellow covers. The avant-garde periodical, The Yellow Book appeared in London in 1894. Its bright yellow cover was designed by Aubrey Beardsley (1872-1898). Uncompromisingly stylish and ready to push boundaries, The Yellow Book came to define the decade as ‘the Yellow ’90s’.

Photography and electricity also had revolutionary impacts at the time, and some of the first innovators were women. ‘Colour Revolution’ features one of the earliest colour reproduction techniques, cyanotypes, made by Anna Atkins (1799-1871), who used the process to create ethereally beautiful ‘photograms’ – made without a camera – of British algae, published between 1843 and 1853.

The exhibition is curated by Matthew Winterbottom, Curator of Sculpture and Decorative Arts at the Ashmolean Museum, and Professor Charlotte Ribeyrol of the Sorbonne Université, Paris.

The exhibition, ‘Colour Revolution: Victorian Art, Fashion & Design’ continues in the John Sainsbury Exhibition Galleries in the Ashmolean Museum until 18 February 2024. It is open daily from 10 am to 5 pm, and tickets are from £6 to £17.

A Comberford family myth and the first keeper of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford

‘Three knocks are always heard at Comberford Hall before the death of a family member’ … family lore recorded by Robert Plot of the Ashmolean Museum (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

During my recent visits to Oxford, I have been in the Ashmolean Museum on Beaumont Street a number of times, most recently in search of John Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelites.

This most recent visit was motivated in part by a search for the portrait in 1853 of John Ruskin (1819-1900) by Sir John Everett Millais (1829-1896) – a painting that inspired the pose by my grandfather, Stephen Edward Comerford (1867-1921), for a late Victorian portrait photograph.

But there was another family connection too. One of the vignettes and stories in history and folklore recorded by Kate Gomez in her book The Little Book of Staffordshire (Stroud: The History Press) is the belief or superstition: ‘Three knocks are always heard at Comberford Hall before the death of a family member.’

It is a story that was first recorded, as far as I know, by the 17th century historian, Robert Plot (1640-1696), the first Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.

Robert Plot was born in Sutton Barne in Borden, Kent, in 1640 and was educated at Magdalen Hall, Oxford (BA, 1661, MA, 1664, DCL, 1671). He became the first Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum and Professor of Chemistry in 1683, after Elias Ashmole (1617-1692) persuaded Oxford University to design a museum around and for his collection. The museum was first located on Broad Street.

Although Plot’s beliefs about alchemy have been discredited, his views and values are stereotypical for his time. He was an early historian of Staffordshire, and he published The Natural History of Staffordshire in Oxford in 1686. It was Plot’s second book, following The Natural History of Oxfordshire, published in 1677.

Plot began to work in earnest on Staffordshire in 1679. His studies of Staffordshire were instigated at the invitation of Walter Chetwynd of Ingestre Hall. But Plot’s principal reason for selecting Staffordshire was in honour of his patron, Elias Ashmole, founder of the Ashmolean Museum, who was born in Lichfield in 1617.

Plot travelled throughout Staffordshire. By early 1681, and had prepared an accurate map of the county. He received extensive support and co-operation from local landowners. The book was progressing well, the illustrations were in hand, publication was imminent, and there were many illustrious subscribers, including Sir Christopher Wren. The chapter layout was similar to that for The Natural History of Oxfordshire, although the content was treated in more detail.

This detailed research led to a delay, however, and that delay was extended by Plot’s appointments as Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum and as Professor of Chemistry. The book was finally published in April 1686. Critics say the book was more philosophically based than his first book and to be his greatest achievement during this period.

Plot’s work on Staffordshire combines scientific enquiry with local folklore to provide an intriguing account not merely of the county’s natural history, but also its geology, pre-industrial manufacturing and culture during the 17th century, and Plot details the natural curiosities he found in Staffordshire.

In his Natural History of Staffordshire, Plot records this superstition about ‘the knocking before the death of any of ... the family of Cumberford of Cumberford in this County; three knocks being always heard at Cumberford-Hall before the decease of any of that family, tho’ the party dyeing be at never so great a distance’ – Robert Plot, The Natural History of Staffordshire (Oxford, 1686), pp 329-330.

Plot also recalls that when a burbot, a rare fish, was caught at Fazeley Bridge in August 1656, Colonel William Comberford had it drawn from life and placed the drawing in Comberford Hall.

In his Natural History of Staffordshire, Plot also describes a double sunset viewable from Leek, the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance, well dressing, and, for the first time, the Polish swan, a pale morph of the mute swan. His description of pottery-manufacture in Burslem, North Staffordshire, is also of interest.

Plot dedicated his Natural History of Staffordshire to James II and in 1688 he was named Historiographer Royal. His ambition to continue the multi-volume series for all England was, however, never realised. He died in 1696.

The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford … Robert Plot was the first keeper, when the museum was based in Broad Street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

An afternoon with Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelites in Oxford, inspired by a family photograph

‘A Converted British Family Sheltering a Christian Missionary from the Persecution of the Druids’ by William Holman Hunt in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Patrick Comerford

During one of my visits to Oxford this month, I went in search of the Oxford of John Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelites.

I began my escapade in the Ashmolean Museum, which has an important and impressive collection of Pre-Raphaelite art, many from the collection of Thomas Combe, the superintendent of the Clarendon Press in Oxford and an important figure in the stories of both Saint Paul’s Church, facing the campus of the Oxford University Press, and Saint Barnabas Church in Jericho.

The Stones of Venice by John Ruskin (1819-1900) was an important book as I was developing my interests in architecture and later as I developed my interests in Venice. But I was also interested in Ruskin’s Oxford for another reason: for the past ten years, the Ashmolean has held the formal portrait of John Ruskin by Sir John Everett Millais (1829-1896).

This portrait, painted 170 years ago in 1853, captures Ruskin in a style that fulfils Ruskin’s ideals. But I have family reasons too for wanting to see this portrait of Ruskin. When my grandfather, Stephen Edward Comerford (1867-1921), was young and successful, he had his portrait taken in a way that presented him as a young Victorian man with confidence looking forward to the future.

I had always imagined that the photograph was taken in a Victorian photographer’s studio, but with the intent of creating the impression of an ideal rustic background, with a cascading waterfall, rocks, rich vegetation, and a clearing in a former thicket. Stephen is dressed in a three-piece suit and wing-collar shirt, holding a walking cane in one hand and a hat in the other. But his shoes are well-made and highly-polished, so this is clearly a studio scene rather than a setting at the Powerscourt Waterfall near Enniskerry, Co Wicklow, or at a waterfall in Killarney, Co Kerry. It is certainly not in the Scottish Highlands.

It seems like a photograph that a man confident a full and successful career lay ahead of him would like to have taken. I only have a copy of the photograph, from the house in Terenure where my grandmother lived, rather than the original. So I have no idea of the original date of the photograph, or of the name of the photographer. When it was announced in 2013 that the Ashmolean had acquired Millais’s portrait of Ruskin, I realised that my grandfather’s photograph was modelled on this celebrated Pre-Raphaelite painting.

This is the painting that led to the breakdown of Ruskin’s marriage, and until it was acquired by the Ashmolean it was ‘one of the most important Pre-Raphaelite paintings’ that had remained in private ownership.

The Ashmolean has such a rich collection of Pre-Raphaelite works because of the many connections members of the movement had with of Oxford. A number of them – including Edward Burne-Jones, William Morris, Alfred William Hunt and John Ruskin – studied at the University.

Ruskin left much of his collection, including his teaching collection, to the university. He was an undergraduate at Christ Church, Oxford, from 1836 to 1842, when he lived with his mother on High Street. His Modern Painters, published anonymously in 1843, was credited to him as ‘a graduate of Oxford’. His writings were highly influential and he became irrevocably associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, befriending Millais and Hunt, and then Rossetti, Siddal and Burne-Jones.

Ruskin was appointed Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford in 1869. He was critical of the teaching methods at the art schools of his day, and founded the School of Drawing in 1871.

‘Convent Thoughts’ was painted by Charles Collins in Thomas Combe’s garden in Oxford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was formed in 1848 by a group of young painters, sculptors and writers who wanted to restore to English art the freshness and close study of nature that they found in early Italian painting before Raphael. The original group included Edward Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Holman Hunt, and the sculptor Thomas Woolner. Later they were joined by William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones.

The most important connection the Pre-Raphaelites had with the city of Oxford was through the support they received from the wealthy superintendent of the University Press, Thomas Combe (1796-1872), and his wife Martha (1806-1893).

The Combes were a generation older than the Pre-Raphaelite artists, but with no children of their own they became like surrogate parents to the young artists, especially Holman Hunt and Millais. The young artists would come and stay at their home in Oxford while they supported them by buying and commissioning works.

A sketch by Pre-Raphaelite artist Charles Alston Collins depicts an evening at Combe’s house with the white-haired publisher reading by candlelight – perhaps from the Bible – as the household gathers round. Martha darns a sock while Millais sits on the floor.

These two patrons of the Pre-Raphaelites are commemorated in a pair of portraits by Holman Hunt, in which Thomas sparkles with wit and good humour, though Martha’s depiction is somewhat less flattering.

Collins and Millais, who were close friends, stayed with the Combes in Oxford from September to November 1850, when Collins and Millais worked on two significant paintings, both of which are now in the Ashmolean.

Collins’s ‘Convent Thoughts’, painted in the Combes’ garden, is a vibrant example of the early Pre-Raphaelite use of bright colours and intricate details. His depiction of a nun was of great interest to the Combes as they were keen supporters of Tractarians or the Oxford Movement.

Combe bought the painting and it hung in his home with two other religious works – ‘A Converted British Family Sheltering a Christian Missionary from the Persecution of the Druids’ by Holman Hunt, and ‘The Return of the Dove to the Ark’ by Millais – in a symbolic triptych of Hope, Charity and Faith.

All three now hang in the Pre-Raphaelite Gallery in the Ashmolean, thanks to the Combe bequest.

‘The Return of the Dove to the Ark’ by Edward Millais … part of a ‘symbolic triptych of Hope, Charity and Faith’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

A Pre-Raphaelite group, including Rossetti, Burne-Jones, Morris and Arthur Hughes, decorated the Oxford Union with murals In the 1850s. The Old Library of the Oxford Union was built in Gothic style in the 1850s as the university’s new debating hall.

Seven artists worked together on a series of murals to decorate the hall’s upper walls of the hall in 1857. The ambitious project was organised by Rossetti, by then was a close friend of Morris and Burne-Jones and of the hall’s architect, Benjamin Woodward. Most of the group brought together by Rossetti were not very experienced and the whole endeavour became chaotic.

Rossetti offered to decorate the interior for free board and lodgings – and unlimited supplies of soda water. The other artists involved were Val Prinsep, John Hungerford Pollen, Arthur Hughes and John Rodham Spencer Stanhope. William Riviere and his son Briton painted the three panels that were left over when Rossetti and his friends abandoned the work at the end of the Long Vacation of 1857.

The paintings depict the Arthurian legends and the search for the Holy Grail, as told in Tennyson’s recently published epic poem ‘Morte d’Arthur.’ The artists sometimes feature as subjects in each other’s paintings, and the future wife of William Morris, then Jane Burden, was persuaded to model for the murals by both Rossetti and Morris murals after first meeting the artists during the project. Rossetti’s Lancelot and Queen Guinevere panel is probably the best-preserved, and Jane Burden was the study for Guinevere.

They painted straight onto the walls without preparation. Because their techniques were not long-lasting, the vivid colours of the murals faded quickly. The murals can no longer be seen distinctly during the day, but the colours emerge on a clear winter’s evening, and look very dream-like, just as were intended to be seen originally.

‘The Prioress’s Tale Cabinet’ was a wedding present from Edward Burne-Jones to William Morris and Jane Burden (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Jane Burden was born into a poor Oxford family. She came to the attention of Rossetti and Burne-Jones while they were working on the murals, and she became a model and muse for the group. Burne-Jones used her as a model for the Virgin Mary on the ‘Prioress’s Tale Cabinet.’

The ‘Prioress’s Tale Cabinet’ was designed by Philip Webb and decorated by Burne-Jones with episodes from Chaucer’s ‘Prioress's Tale.’ Burne-Jones gave it as a wedding present to William Morris when he married Jane Burden. It now stands in the Pre-Raphaelite gallery in the Ashmolean.

When Jane Burden married Morris in 1859, she may already have been in love with Rossetti. She was a muse to both Rossetti and Morris and inspired many paintings and drawings by Rossetti, who painted her repeatedly until his death.

Other Pre-Raphaelites represented in the Ashmolean include William Holman Hunt (1827-1910). He was a precocious talent and his self-portrait, painted when he was just 14, hangs in the central section of the gallery.

His paintings, such as ‘A Converted British Family Sheltering a Christian Missionary from the Persecution of the Druids’ and ‘The Afterglow in Egypt’, illustrate his particular style, with bright, natural colours and meticulous attention to detail.

‘The Seeds and Fruits of English Poetry’ by Ford Madox Brown (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

‘The Seeds and Fruits of English Poetry’ was painted by Ford Madox Brown (1821-1893) to illustrate the ennobling of the English language by Chaucer. It was planned in London, composed in Rome in 1845, and completed in Hampstead in 1853 after Brown’s return to England.

The central panel shows Geoffrey Chaucer reading at the court of Edward III, with his patron, the Black Prince, on his left.

The ‘fruits; of English poetry appear in the wings: Milton, Spenser and Shakespeare on the left; Byron, Pope and Burns on the right; Goldsmith and Thomson in the roundels; and, inscribed in the cartouches beneath, held by the children, the names of Campbell, Moore, Shelley, Keats, Chatterton, Kirke White, Coleridge and Wordsworth.

The Ruskin School of Art on High Street, Oxford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

I set out in search of Ruskin’s portrait by Millais in the Ashmolean, only to learn that it has been on loan for some months to another exhibition. Instead, I spent an educational and enjoyable afternoon in Pre-Raphaelite Gallery, but shall have to return soon again to find the portrait that may have inspired the pose in that Victorian photograph of my grandfather.

As for Ruskin’s institute, it was renamed the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art in 1945, and then changed its name again in 2014, becoming the Ruskin School of Art, as it is known today.

It remains the University of Oxford’s Fine Art department and is one of the leading art schools in the UK.

Stephen Edward Comerford (left) like a cut-out figure at a waterfall, and John Ruskin (right) in the well-known portrait by John Everett Millais (Photomontage: Patrick Comerford)

Ashmolean exhibition in Oxford looks at the myths and reality of the Labyrinth, Knossos and Arthur Evans

A reproduction of the Ladies in Blue Fresco in Knossos … part of the exhibition ‘Labyrinth Knossos, Myth & Reality’ in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Patrick Comerford

I was in Oxford earlier this week, and spent much of the day in the Ashmolean Museum at the exhibition, Labyrinth: Knossos, Myth & Reality. This is the Ashmolean’s first exhibition this year, and it explores one of the most infamous of classical myths and celebrated stories of modern archaeology: the Labyrinth, the Minotaur and the Palace of Knossos.

I have been to Knossos countless times since the mid-1980s, and have roamed around its labyrinthine passages, wondering whether the site represents the fantasies of Sir Arthur Evans or actually reconstruct the palace of the mythical Minotaur.

Was there ever such a thing as a Minoan civilisation?

Was it all a myth?

Were the Minoan people and the palace itself the fantastical reconstructions of a British archaeologist?

The current exhibition in the Ashmolean features more than 200 objects, over 100 of which are on loan from Athens and Crete. They are being shown for the first time in more than a century alongside the Ashmolean’s collections and the archive of photographs and documents that illustrate the exciting moments when the Palace of Knossos was uncovered between 1900-1905.

In Greek myth, the Labyrinth at Knossos held the Minotaur, a monstrous bull-human hybrid awaiting his sacrificial victims. The story remains one of the most enduring of classical myths and Knossos is now one of the most visited archaeological sites in Greece.

The exhibition traces the story of the excavation of Knossos at Crete and offers both an exploration of Minoan culture and Greek myth, and a deeper look at British archaeological history.’

The bull depicted on frescoes in Knossos in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

For centuries, travellers searched Crete for the mythical Labyrinth, leaving a trail of myths, misleading maps, and misread archaeological evidence until 1878, when the remains of an ancient building at Knossos were discovered by a Cretan businessman and scholar, Minos Kalokairinos.

The authorities in Iraklion prevented Kalokairinos from properly excavating the site. Crete was then under the partial control of the Ottoman Empire, and – until Crete gained independence – any significant finds were at risk of being removed to Constantinople (Istanbul). His discoveries attracted international attention, and archaeologists from various countries competed for the future rights to excavate.

Kalokairinos welcomed the British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans (1851-1941) to Knossos in 1894. But relations between the two men soured after Evans gained the rights to excavate the site. Kalokairinos later claimed that Evans had illegally excavated on his land near the Palace, but his case was rejected in court.

Kalokairinos had become a marginal figure in Cretan archaeology while Evans had been embraced by the academic establishment. Kalokairinos died that same year, having had no further involvement with the site he had discovered. The authorities in Crete gave Evans permission to dig at Knossos in 1900.

Descending into the labyrinth in Knossos (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Evans was also the Keeper or director of the Ashmolean in Oxford. He began his excavation in Knossos, outside Iraklion, convinced that this building was the Labyrinth of myth. He rapidly found colourful frescoes, clay tablets showing an early system of writing and even a room with an intact stone throne on which he imagined the rulers sat.

Evans dubbed this labyrinthine building as the ‘Palace of Minos,’ and established that it was around 4,000 years old and built during the Bronze Age. He popularised the term ‘Minoan’ to describe the civilisation of Crete in this period.

The exhibition features some of the finest Minoan objects uncovered by Evans, from everyday objects like decorated pottery to elaborate sculptures, many on loan from the Archaeological Museum in Iraklion. They are reunited in this exhibition with drawings made during the excavation from the Ashmolean’s Sir Arthur Evans archive.

Some of the drawings show the process of reconstructing the site and its finds, providing an insight into Evans’s controversial concrete restorations of the Palace of Minos in the mid-20th century.

One of the exhibition’s highlights is a finely carved marble triton shell, showing the skill of Minoan craftspeople and their particular interest in marine animals. Other objects show octopuses and Argonauts in the depths of the sea, or depictions of bulls, sometimes with people leaping over them.

Evans saw in these the origin of the myth of the Minotaur: some Minoan seal-stones show how these images of bull-leaping could be condensed into the head of a bull and the legs of the leaper.

The size and scale of the site meant excavation work at Knossos continued at times throughout the 20th century and still continues today.

A watercolour of the restored bull-leaping fresco panel (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

The final room of the exhibition displays discoveries made in the post-war period, and many recent finds. These include objects verifying Knossos as the site of the earliest known farming settlement in Europe, established ca 7000 BCE, as well as objects uncovered in cemeteries and religious sanctuaries in the surrounding areas. These show that Knossos flourished for thousands of years before it was largely abandoned ca 800 BCE.

Among the recent finds on display is a spectacular Bronze Age dagger with inlaid gold and silver griffins, the first of its kind found in Crete.

The exhibition ends with the chilling discovery at Anemospilia in 1979 that appeared to show evidence of a ritual human sacrifice. This discovery by the archaeologists Yannis and Efi Sakellarakis challenged the public perception of the Minoans as peaceful and provided a tantalising hint of the Minotaur myth.

They excavated a building on the slopes of Mount Juktas that had been destroyed by an earthquake. Within it they found several human skeletons, one lying on a platform, and seemingly in the process of being ritually killed. Two others, a man and a woman, appeared to be carrying out the deed.

Other similar finds in other parts of Crete have confirmed this theory. Perhaps the sacrifices were a response to the damaging earthquakes that are frequent in Crete. Could stories of human sacrifice have been passed down from generation to generation and resulted in the myth of the Athenian youths being fed to the Minotaur?

A Cremation Urn (670-600 BCE) … this unusual type of cremation urn with its three looped feet is only found in the area of Knossos (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

After uncovering the Palace at Knossos, Evans tried to find where the people who lived there were buried. Although he found tombs, they dated from later in the history of the palace.

The archaeologist Nota Dimopoulou continued excavations at Poros, a suburb of Iraklion, in the 1980s. Under the modern houses she found chamber tombs, cut into the soft limestone bedrock. They contained valuable grave goods from the palace’s heyday between 1700 and 1450 BCE. Poros was probably the main harbour for Knossos in this period and the grave goods reflect prosperity from trade with the Eastern Mediterranean.

Since 1903, the Ashmolean Museum has held the largest and most significant collection of Minoan archaeology outside Crete thanks to Sir Arthur Evans.

This is the first exhibition in Britain to focus on Knossos. It includes over 100 objects that have never left Crete and Greece before, alongside discoveries from the Sir Arthur Evans Archive in the Ashmolean.

The exhibition also offers two immersive experiences inspired by Knossos. A Restoration (2016), by the Turner Prize winning artist Elizabeth Price, is being shown in the third gallery. The 15-minute, two-screen digital video is a fiction, narrated by a ‘chorus’ of ‘museum administrators’ who use Arthur Evans’s archive to figuratively reconstruct the Palace at Knossos within the museum’s computer server.

Visitors are also invited on a unique virtual tour of the Palace at Knossos as reimagined in the 5th century BCE, during the time of the Peloponnesian War, thanks to the digital recreation of the site in the Assassin’s Creed Odyssey video game.

Horns of consecration (1375-1300 BCE) … a number of these objects were found at Knossos and Evans regarded them as stylised bull’s horns used to define a sacred space (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Archaeologists continue to explore Knossos and its surrounding area, using the latest techniques. They have expanded the scope of Evans’s research in both time and place. Their discoveries have shown that people have lived at Knossos for 9000 years, making it one of the oldest settlements in Europe, although the Palace of Minos only existed for 600 of these years.

Finds from before, during and after the time of the palace provide a glimpse into people’s lives, and how they were treated in death. Over thousands of years, people must have told each other stories about Knossos which evolved into myths. Archaeologists may have uncovered some alarming grains of truth behind the fantastical tales.

The exhibition is curated by Dr Andrew Shapland, Sir Arthur Evans Curator of Bronze Age and Classical Greece, and is open until 30 July 2023.

Octopus Jar (1450-1400 BCE) … a number of these ‘Palace Style’ octopus jars were found at Knossos (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Elias Ashmole, a celebrated son of Lichfield, was born 400 years ago on 23 May 1617

Elias Ashmole was born 400 years ago on 23 May 2017 … a statue on the side of Lichfield Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

Patrick Comerford

Today marks the fourth centenary of the birth of an amazing and at times enigmatic son of Lichfield. Elias Ashmole (1617-1692), the founder of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, was born at 5 Breadmarket Street in Lichfield 400 years ago on this day, 23 May 1617.

Elias Ashmole was a celebrated English antiquary, politician, herald, genealogist, astrologer and alchemist. Ashmole supported the royalist side during the English Civil War, and at the restoration of Charles II he was rewarded with several lucrative offices.

His library reflected his wide range of interests, including history, law, numismatics, chorography, alchemy, astrology, astronomy, and botany. He was one of the founding Fellows of the Royal Society and an early freemason, and his interests ranged from the antiquarian and the mystical to the scientific. An avid collector of curiosities and artefacts, he donated most of his collection, his library and his manuscripts to the University of Oxford to create the Ashmolean Museum.

Throughout his life, he returned constantly to Lichfield, and twice he stood without success in parliamentary elections, hoping to become MP for Lichfield.

Elias Ashmole’s birthplace at No 5 Breadmarket Street, Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

Ashmole was born in Breadmarket Street, Lichfield. His mother, Anne, was the daughter of a wealthy Coventry draper, Anthony Bowyer. His father, Simon Ashmole (1589-1634) was a saddler and been a soldier in Ireland during the Earl of Essex’s campaign. His grandfather Thomas Ashmole had been Mayor or senior bailiff of Lichfield in 1604 and 1612, and sheriff of Lichfield in 1593, and his uncle, also Thomas Ashmole, was Mayor in 1651 and Sheriff in 1638 and 1660.

He was given the name Elias, the Latin form of the name of the prophet Elijah, by his godfather Thomas Otley, the sacrist of Lichfield Cathedral.

The young Elias Ashmole attended Lichfield Grammar School (now King Edward VI School) and was a chorister in Lichfield Cathedral, where he was taught singing by the composer Michael East, who was the master of the choristers, and keyboard music by Henry Hinde, the cathedral organist.

Ashmole left Lichfield in 1633 to live in London. He qualified as a solicitor in 1638, and that year he married Eleanor Mainwaring (1603-1641) from Cheshire. Eleanor died while pregnant three years later on 6 December 1641, and Ashmole threw himself into the political and military conflicts of the day.

He supported Charles I throughout the Civil War. At the outbreak of fighting in 1642, he moved to Cheshire, and in 1644 he was appointed the King’s Commissioner of Excise at Lichfield.

From Lichfield he moved to Oxford, where he became an ordnance officer in the King’s forces. While he was in Oxford, he studied mathematics and physics at Brasenose College, where he had lodgings.

He seems never to have taken part in any actual fighting during the Civil War, and after the surrender of Worcester in July 1646, he retired to Cheshire. On his way, he returned to Lichfield, where his mother had died three weeks earlier from the plague.

His first wife, Mary Lady Mainwaring, was a daughter of Sir William Forster of Aldermaston. When they married in 1649, she was 20 years older than him, had been widowed three times, and she was wealthy. The marriage was not a happy one, but when Lady Mainwaring sued for separation and alimony, her case was dismissed by the courts in 1657. Ashmole was now wealthy enough to pursue his interests, including botany and alchemy.

The former Lichfield Grammar School, where Ashmole was a schoolboy, now houses the chamber of Lichfield District Council (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

At the restoration of Charles II in 1660, Ashmole was rewarded richly for his loyalty and was appointed Secretary and Clerk of the Courts of Surinam and Comptroller of the White Office, Commissioner and then Comptroller for the Excise in London, and later Accountant-General of the Excise. He was also involved in organising the coronation.

He was appointed to the College of Arms in 1660 as Windsor Herald. Ashmole performed his heraldic and genealogical duties scrupulously, and in 1663 he was back in Lichfield when he was involved in the Visitation of Staffordshire, which was carried out by the antiquarian and the Norroy King of Arms, Sir William Dugdale (1605-1686).

Dugdale was assisted by two heralds who were born in Lichfield and educated at Lichfield Grammar School – his clerk, Gregory King (1648-1712), who later became Lancaster Herald and a pioneering statistician, and Dugdale’s future son-in-law, Elias Ashmole.

Dugdale and Ashmole, undoubtedly, were familiar with the career of William Comberford: Dugdale had been commissioned in 1641 to make a copy of all the monuments in the main English cathedrals and churches, including Lichfield Cathedral and Saint Editha’s Church, Tamworth, and received his MA at Oxford with William Comberford in November 1642; William Comberford was also involved in the Civil War in Lichfield while Ashmole was the King’s Commissioner of Excise at Lichfield.

At the time of the Visitation of Staffordshire, William Comberford’s brother, Robert Comberford, was 69 and living at Comberford Hall. On the first day of the Visitation in Lichfield, on 30 March 1663, Robert certified the pedigree for the Comberford family of Comberford, and furnished Ashmole with many of the details of the family.

However, Sydney Grazebrook, who edited the Visitation for publication by the Harleian Society, insightfully asks why Robert Comberford failed to furnish a number of pertinent particulars, including the full name of his father-in-law. In addition, it might be asked why he failed to provide dates of death for his brothers and sisters, or particulars of their marriages and children, some of which ought to have been known to both Ashmole and Dugdale, and all of which would have helped avoid confusion to later generations tracing the family tree.

Ashmole presented the magnificent Ashmole Cup to Lichfield in 1666, and it remains in the civic collection of plate and insignia.

The former Lady Mainwaring died on 1 April 1668, and seven months later, on 3 November, Ashmole married Elizabeth Dugdale (1632-1701), the much younger daughter of his friend and fellow herald Sir William Dugdale. In 1675, he resigned as Windsor Herald, perhaps because of factional strife within the College of Arms. He was offered the post of Garter Principal King of Arms, but turned down this offer in favour of Dugdale.

Ashmole stood as a candidate in the 1678 by-election caused by the death of Richard Dyott. During the campaign, Ashmole’s cousin, Thomas Smalridge, who was his campaign manager, fell ill and died. Ashmole did not visit the constituency, and he lost the election to Sir Henry Lyttelton.

After the Restoration, Ashmole had presented new prayer books to Lichfield Cathedral. In 1684, Dugdale wrote to his son-in-law that ‘the vulgar sort of people’ were not ‘yet weaned from the Presbyterian practises, which was long prayers of their own devising, and senseless sermons.’

Ashmole still appears to have had an urge to return to Lichfield, and once again in 1685 he stood as an election candidate. But he stood aside at the request of James II. On election day, all votes cast for Ashmole were declared as votes for the King’s candidate, and through this ruse Richard Leveson was elected MP for Lichfield.

Elizabeth’s pregnancies all ended in stillbirth or miscarriage, and Ashmole never had any children. He died at his house in Lambeth on 18 May 1692, and was buried at Saint Mary’s Church, Lambeth, on 26 May. He bequeathed the remainder of his collection and library to Oxford for the Ashmolean Museum, which is considered by some to be the first truly public museum in Europe.

Lichfield Grammar School in Saint John Street, where Ashmole went to school is now the Chamber of the Lichfield District Council Chamber, and Ashmole’s birthplace in Breadmarket Street is now a solicitor's office, marked by a stone plaque.

Later this year, to mark the 400th anniversary of his birth, Lichfield Cathedral is hosting an exhibition, ‘Discovering Elias Ashmole.’ The exhibition, from 19 October 2017 to 18 February 2018, offers an opportunity to find out more about the life and times of this celebrated son of Lichfield.

Elias Ashmole’s statue at the south-east corner of Lichfield Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

A quiet corner with rustic charm near Lichfield Cathedral

The three spires of Lichfield Cathedral seen from Prince Rupert’s Mound ... a hidden corner of Lichfield and one of two open space areas scheduled as ancient monuments (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2011)

Patrick Comerford

Prince Rupert’s Mound is a hidden corner of Lichfield, known to few visitors, but one of the tranquil places I was happy to introduce another visitor to last week. This grassy knoll is behind the George and Dragon on the east side of Beacon Street, and is easily found by turning into Gaia Lane, and walking down a few paces, where it rises on the left or north side.

Prince Rupert’s Mound is one of two open space areas in Lichfield that are scheduled as ancient monuments – the other is the Friary remains site. Last Friday, two of us visited Prince Rupert’s Mound, which place takes its name from the earthworks that supported the artillery bombardment of the Cathedral Close by Prince Rupert of the Rhine during the sieges in the English Civil War of the mid-17th century.

In 1643, after the Parliamentarians had consolidated their positions in Lichfield and strengthened their defences in the Close, Prince Rupert (1619-1682) entered the city on 7 April. He surrounded the Close, setting up his artillery on this high ground north of the cathedral close. In April 1643, Prince Rupert commanded the second siege of The Close, and captured it for King Charles within two weeks. During this siege, the bombardment from the platform proved ineffective, and Prince Rupert recruited miners to tunnel beneath the north-west tower, where they successfully laid the first land mines ever to be used in Britain.

The parliamentarian commander, Colonel Russell, surrendered on 21 April, and a Royalist garrison with Colonel Richard Bagot as governor took over.

Prince Rupert, who was born in Prague, was the German or Bohemian (take your choice) grandson of James I and nephew of Charles I. He passed through Lichfield again in March 1644 on his way to relieve Newark and once more on his way back.

Lichfield remained a royalist stronghold, supported by financial levies, donations, and money taken from the enemy, until 1646. On 9 March 1646, Sir William Brereton captured Lichfield and began a four-month siege of the Cathedral Close. The besieged royalists used the central spire of the cathedral as a vantage point, and when they flaunted regimental colours and officers’ sashes from it on May Day it became a symbol of resistance in the eyes of the parliamentarians.

Brereton bombarded the cathedral for five days, and on 12 May the central tower collapsed, damaging the choir and nave. However, the royalist garrisons in the Close continued to resist even after the fall of Oxford on 26 June and only surrendered on 10 July marching out on 16 July.

The cathedral was desecrated by the parliamentarians in 1643, when its glass, statues and organs were destroyed. The final siege left it in ruins along with the Bishop’s Palace and many of the houses in the Close.

Lickle Cottage ... typical of the houses that add to the charm and character of Beacon Street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2011)

The looting that followed brought about further destruction. Beacon Street was burnt by the royalists during the final siege to deprive the attackers of cover, and 52 houses there belonging to the vicars choral were destroyed, although some had been rebuilt by 1649.

With the destruction of the cathedral in 1646, centuries of religious custom came to an end, for the next 14 years the cathedral was “a place of ruin, inhabited by squatters and haunted by owls a night,” according to the local historian Howard Clayton.

The three spires of Lichfield Cathedral seen from Stafford Road on the northern edges of the city (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2011)

The destruction of the cathedral by the parliamentarian forces continued long after the last shots were fired in the Civil War. The contents of the cathedral library were dispersed after the surrender of 1646, and the early records of the corporation disappeared.

Elias Ashmole (1617-1692), the Lichfield-born antiquarian, noted in his diary towards the end of 1651 that the Parliamentarian Governor of Stafford, Colonel Danvers, had ordered “workmen to strip off lead from the roof,” and Ashmole feared that the cathedral was about “to be totally ruined.” In 1652, he noted how only two of three cathedral spires remained standing. By mid-1653, a pewter manufacturer had removed the Jesus Bell from the cathedral to break into pieces for his workshop.

Services in the cathedral were resumed by mid-June 1660, the chapter was reconstituted that September, and parliamentarian soldiers squatting in the clergy houses in the Close were evicted.

Work on rebuilding the ruined cathedral began in earnest with the arrival of Bishop John Hacket in August 1662, and it was rededicated on Christmas Eve 1669. A new bishop’s palace was built in 1687 and a new deanery in 1707.

The George and Dragon in Beacon Street ... Prince Rupert’s Mound serves as a beer garden (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2011)

Today, Prince Rupert’s Mound is a Scheduled Monument and is listed by Lichfield District Council as an important historic site within the designated character area of Gaia Lane. It serves too as a beer garden for the George and Dragon, a pub with character facing onto Beacon Street.

Beacon Street is a charming residential area in the north of Lichfield, with some timber-framed houses and cottages as well as houses influenced by the Arts and Crafts Movement, that add to the character of the area and giving it a curious ambience that is a mixture of both rural setting and late Victorian suburb.

Lichfield’s last remaining pinfold, where Beacon Street turns into Stafford Road (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2011)

Just outside the north-western tip of the conservation area, on the west side of Beacon Street, where it becomes Stafford Road, is the last remaining Pinfold in Lichfield. Pinfolds were built for stray cattle at the main entrances to towns and cities. In Lichfield, the person responsible for rounding up and impounding these animals in the 1500s, was the “Warden of the Fields.” By the mid 1600s, the job title had become “Pinner,” and two pinners were elected, with responsibility for Saint Chad’s Parish, the other for Saint Michael’s Parish.

Two pinners and pinlock keepers continue to be elected in Lichfield each year at the ancient manorial court of Saint George.

This last remaining pinfold in Lichfield dates from the 18th or 19th century, although its origins can be traced to an earlier pinfold in Beacon Street. In 1645, this stood near the corner of the present Anson Avenue, north of Prince Rupert’s Mound. But it was removed in 1809 and replaced by the pinfold on Stafford Road. It was repaired and restored in 1990 with the assistance of the Conduit Lands Trust.

From the Pinfold, we strolled on back up Cross-in-Hand Lane, behind Stafford Road, and crossed the Western Bypass back to the Hedgehog. At times, we also strolled on into the country lane that is a continuation of Cross-in-Hand Lane, enjoying the rural delights on the northern edges of Lichfield.

The rural and rustic charms of Cross-in-Hand Lane, behind the Hedgehog on Stafford Road in Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2011)

Meanwhile, what happened to Prince Rupert? In English folklore, he remains the archetypal cavalier. But he was quarrelsome and difficult, and regularly fell out with both his uncle Charles I and with his fellow royalist officers.

After the civil war, he became a pirate in the Caribbean and a slave trader, but he returned to England after his cousin Charles II was restored to the throne, and gained a new reputation for his scientific explorations and discoveries. He died in 1682 and was buried in Westminster.

Apart from Prince Rupert’s Mound in Lichfield, he also gave his name to Prince Rupert’s Land in Canada, to the towns of Prince Rupert in British Columbia and Edmonton, and to the Rupert River in Quebec. Prince Rupert’s Land no longer exists. In 1869-1870, the Hudson’s Bay Company sold most of Prince Rupert’s Land to Canada, and the territory was later parcelled out to Manitoba, Saskatchewan, southern Alberta, southern Nunavut, northern parts of Ontario and Quebec, as well as parts of Minnesota and North Dakota, and small portions of Montana and South Dakota.

His sister was the mother of George I, and so the British monarchy passed to a line of German princelings from Hanover.