BIB_ID
295329
Accession number
MA 7631
Creator
West, Benjamin, 1738-1820.
Display Date
1814 Feb. 23.
Credit line
Purchased on the Gordon N. Ray Fund, 2010.
Description
1 item (1 p.) ; 6.4 cm
Notes
Written on stiff card, recto only.
Provenance
Purchased on the Gordon N. Ray Fund, 2010.
Summary
West's note requests that George Shepheard (1770-1842) and friends be admitted "to see the Elgin Marbles at Burlington House -- he being an artist who wish[es] to study there." This is an early reference to the Elgin Marbles, Lord Elgin's collection of classical antiquities controversially removed by him from the Pantheon and other buildings in Athens, which began to arrive in England in 1804. While Elgin negotiated their sale to the nation, the Marbles were temporarily stored in a coal shed at Burlington House, the great Palladian mansion on Piccadilly. The Marbles were finally acquired for the nation in 1816 and thereafter entrusted to the British Museum.
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