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Sir E. Denison Ross, R. L. Hobson, Oscar RaphaelAuthor(s): Basil GraySource: Ars Islamica, Vol. 9 (1942), pp. 235-237Published by: Freer Gallery of Art, The Smithsonian Institution and Department of the Historyof Art, University of MichiganStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4515607 .

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IN MEMORIAM

SIR E. DENISON ROSS, R. L. HOBSON, OSCAR RAPHAEL

SINCE THE OUTBREAK OF WAR IN I939 A WHOLE GENERATION OF ORIENTALISTS IN ENGLAND

seems to have passed away with the close of an epoch in which they had done their work and made their mark. First to leave the field of Eastern art was the veteran George Eumor- fopoulos whose death has already been reported in Ars Islamica. The year I940 brought the death of Sir Denison Ross and I94I the deaths of R. L. Hobson and Oscar Raphael. This is not the place to estimate what their loss means to their many friends; nor can we be concerned here to take account of all their activities, even as scholars or collectors, but only to com- memorate their work for Islamic art and to recall what the withdrawal of their personalities means for students of this subject.

The three men shared a liberal outlook and a fearless and downright expression, though they were in other ways complementary to one another in their gifts. As linguist, scholar, or collector each took a large share in organizing those exhibitions and presiding at those lectures which have done so much to widen the appreciation of oriental art in England in the thirty years before the war.

Denison Ross had a remarkable flare for languages, hut his greatest gift, it may be hazarded, was his zest. He was of the company of those forceful pioneers, explorers, and discoverers in various fields, who have led full lives. He was the driving force behind many projects and is not likely to be forgotten as the first director, from i9i6 to I937, of the Lon- don School of Oriental Studies; but, quick and eloquent as he was in debate and speech, his personality was more fully revealed in private. There must be a great many students who owe a debt to the forces he was able to bring to so many subjects from the range of his knowledge, which the fire of his enthusiasm opened to them. It was his weakness as well as his strength that his hands were never too full for him to take on something else if he saw it was worth doing. As a scholar his most valuable work was done in the editing of historical texts. He was not, and made no claim to be, a scholar of the order of Edward G. Browne (whose Year Amongst the Persians Ross republished in I926 with a characteristic tribute to the author), but he followed him with the same broad sympathy and enthusiasm for Persian culture. He had not a specialized knowledge in any field of Islamic visual art, but his wide experience of Iran and of her literature and history, as well as of the Mongols and Turks of Central Asia and India, gave him insight into the springs of Iranian culture and of the art of the Mughals in India. He was well suited to contribute to such an undertaking as the Cam- bridge History of India.

Too often the linguist has no care for art or understanding of it. Ross was not so in- human; as a historian he made all culture his field, though his first interest was in language and poetry. It was appropriate that he, a Professor of Persian in London University, should become one of the editors of the Survey of Persian Art; but, more than that, it was largely due to him that its publication was undertaken by the Oxford University Press. In the

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236 IN MEMORIAM

counsels of the Royal Central Asian Society and of the Iran Society he was a prime mover, but probably no activity gave him greater pleasure than editing the "Broadway Travelers" series in which he was solely responsible for the oriental material and himself undertook the volume on the Sherley brothers. Here all his gifts as a linguist and historian, combined with a sympathy for a life which he himself might have lived in another age, came into play. He used his gift of tongues above all for the promotion of a better understanding between his own country and the peoples of the East, and he was happy to be called so soon from his retirement to undertake national work. He died in harness, as he would have wished, in Turkey. He was a powerful defender of a life of scholarship and research and generous in his aid to scholars, especially to the young.

Oscar Raphael had the opportunity to travel often and widely, and he made friends wherever he went, so that he became a center of contacts with many countries, not only for himself but for his friends, who were thus able to keep in touch with activities in the study of Eastern art all over the world. He was a born collector, and as a schoolboy was interested in Egyptology and fossils; but he did not turn seriously to Islamic art until after the last war, when Near Eastern pottery began to appear on the Paris and London markets. Successive visits to the Near East in I923, I924, I928, and I932 took him through Egypt, Palestine, Syria, and Turkey-a stage nearer the source. His experience of Far Eastern ceramics gave him confidence in this new and uncharted field, so that at his death his collection included a number of key pieces for the study of this subject. It does not, of course, rival in importance his Chinese collections, but anyone who had seen the Islamic pottery displayed in his London flat will have an impression of the place of honor given to it, and of the distinction with which it filled the place with its romantic richness of color.

Not that Raphael was only an aesthetic collector: he always gave weight to the claims of scholarship and supported with his interest and money scientific excavations in Syria, Pales- tine, and Mesopotamia carried out by Sir Leonard Wooley and others. In forming his own collection he sought for documentary pieces as well as those of aesthetic excellence; and dated examples were especially valued. He was always sympathetic to requests for loans to exhibi- tions both in England and abroad, but he was happiest in showing his possessions in his home to students and lovers of art. It is characteristic of his great generosity that he should have left the whole of his collections to be divided between the British Museum and the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, where he was Honorary Curator of Oriental Art. The division is to be made in accordance with the character and needs of the two museums, and this means that of the Near Eastern pottery the bulk will go to Cambridge, while the British Museum receives several famous pieces including the Samarkand bowl, with eyes, from the Doucet collection (Survey, P1. 56I B) and the dated Rayy bowl of 583 H. (II87 A.D.) published by Dr. R. Ettinghausen in Ars Islamica (II [I935], Figs. i and 2) and reproduced in the Survey of Persian Art (P1. 688) as a Sava piece.

Raphael only published a few papers in the Transactions of the Oriental Ceramic Society and of the Japan Society of London, and a large part of his collections remains unpublished.

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IN MEMORIAM 237

They were built up with enthusiasm and a faith in his eye which made him ready to launch out into fresh fields, and also to hold to lines which had become unpopular, as with his Japanese collections. He will be widely missed and especially at the British Museum where he was a voluntary worker for many years-arriving every morning that he was in London and lending a hand to Hobson in the arranging of cases, and exchanging with him information and opinions. He survived Hobson only by three months, and this second loss, so unexpected, was a heavy blow to the Department of Oriental Antiquities.

Though Raphael traveled extensively, Hobson by reason of his magisterial publications on ceramics, made throughout a generation, is known far more widely, and his name is not likely to be forgotten. His qualities of mind were admirably suited to the highly necessary task of putting in order the subject to which he devoted his working hours. His piercing eye and vigorously exacting judgment were turned first on European, then on Chinese, and finally on Near Eastern pottery and porcelain. The confusions of oriental terminology and falsifica- tion and the pretensions and skepticism of the early western publicists were dissolved and unraveled by his patient and ruthless researches, always carried out with the product of the kiln in his hands as the touchstone of the written evidence. Though he lacked personal expe- rience in the archaeological field, his wide and rare knowledge of the existing corpus of material led archaeologists of all countries, eastern as well as western, to bring the fruits of their digging to his notice. He welcomed each discovery that threw light on the dark places of the subject. In his farewell address to the Oriental Ceramic Society in 1939 he surveyed the progress that he had seen in Far Eastern ceramic studies. It is a pity that he did not do the same for the Near East, but his review in the Burlington Magazine of the section of the Survey of Persian Art dealing with ceramics (which was his last published work) goes some way to estimating the position then reached. His own charting of the established facts is con- tained in his Guide to the Near Eastern Pottery and Porcelain in the British Museum, published in 1932. It is hoped to publish a full bibliography of his writings on ceramics. In it the Near East will not make a big show; but among the collections which he built up during the seventeen years of his keepership at the British Museum, his additions to the Islamic pottery are not unimportant, and represent the constant effort on his part to make them as representative historically as was possible under the existing conditions, which he was the first to deplore. He did not live to see the fruits of scientific excavation in Persia, but his treatment of the Chinese material is an example to those who will have the ordering of this field in the future. His last years were clouded by a painful illness and increasing weakness so that no one would have wished the end delayed. It may justly be said of him that he adorned his subject.

BASIL GRAY

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