RESOLUTION. (Hansard, 16 August 1881)

§ MR. SCHREIBER
, in rising to call attention to the unfinished state of the Central Hall of the Houses of Parliament; and to move— That, in the opinion of this House, the decoration of the Central Hall, interrupted twelve years since, should now be resumed and completed in mosaics, said, the facts were plain, and left no room for dispute. For 12 years the question as to the decoration of the Central Hall had been left in abeyance, and only one of the four panels had been filled in. Although the Hall was unfinished, it was already, as Mr. Bernal Osborne said, under the Mosaic dispen- 43 sation, one panel having been decorated with a Mosaic picture of St. George. He wished to ask, before they separated for the Recess, whether the Government had a policy with regard to the Central Hall, and, if so, what that policy was? Was it a policy of Mosaic fresco, or was it a policy summed up in the words, "Can't you let it alone?" He did not intend to let it alone. He thought it had been let alone too long, with a result not creditable either to Parliament or the nation. The state of the Central Hall would not be tolerated in any other Assembly. It might be that the Government was inclined to a policy of fresco; but before they committed themselves to that, he wished to remind them that on the 8th of July, 1869, Mr. Layard, speaking on this subject, said— The Royal Commission had recommended that the bank spaces in the hall should be filled up by paintings in fresco; but his experience of paintings in fresco had led him to the conclusion that they were not suited for decorations in this country, and much money had already been thrown away upon them within the walls of that House. Not relying on his own judgment, however, he called Dr. Percy and Mr. Barry into council, and with them he examined with the greatest care all the frescoes in the Houses of Parliament. He regretted to say that the result of the examination was that they did not find one which did not show some signs of decay."—[3 Hansard, cxcvii. 1432.] That was their deliberate opinion. The question, then, was whether they were to continue this work? The House would not be surprised to hear that a proposal of Mr. Ayrton to vote £500 for another fresco was negatived without a division. It would be difficult to persuade the House to vote 6d. for such fugitive decorations. An alternative decoration was Mosaic. He would like to hear some Member of the Government who knew something of the subject state what was the objection to Mosaics. Their advantages were obvious—they were bright and imperishable, and they had been employed with admirable effect upon the Albert Memorial and in the chapel at Windsor. If the Central Hall were somewhat dark, more light might be admitted through the windows. The money question was not worth considering. The Houses of Parliament were visited in the course of the year by tens of thousands of poor people; and if the Central Hall were well decorated it would form a source of intelligent interest and popular instruction. If he 44 could not produce any impression upon the Treasury Bench, he should appeal to those Members from Ireland who usually sat below him, and call their attention to the exclusion of St. Patrick from the honours due to him in that House. If at the meeting of Parliament in February he found that Mr. Poynter had not been commissioned to prepare a design for St. Patrick, he should ask the Irish Members, and also those Scotch Members who claimed St. Patrick as a Scotchman, to give him their assistance. In that way he should be sure to carry his point. Then St. Andrew and St. David might follow on behalf of Scotland and Wales. Before he sat down he would call attention to what had passed between himself and the late Commissioner of Works. After an absence of 12 years, he was much distressed to find that the decoration of the Central Hall remained where he had left it. He asked Mr. Adam when he intended to complete the mural decoration of the Central Hall, and whether he was in possession of the three designs for the three vacant panels? The answer was that the question of the best mode of filling the panels had given rise to much discussion, and had been fully inquired into in the years 1870–1; but that no definite conclusion had been arrived at. His Notice had been on the Paper for some months, so that his right hon. Friend had had ample time to consider the question. The cost of the panel which had been filled in was about £675, so that the three vacant panels would cost about £2,000. He hoped his right hon. Friend would allow him to repeat the question at a future time. The hon. Member concluded by moving his Resolution.

§ MR. CAVENDISH BENTINCK
contended that money expended on works of art should only be employed in purchasing some well-established and re- 45 cognized production, or in encouraging British art and manufactures. Unless these were the conditions on which money was voted, it appeared to him that it had. far better remain in the public purse. The frescoes had been utter failures, with two exceptions—one was that by Mr. Watts, of King Alfred, and the other was the group by Gibson in the Princes' Chamber in the House of Lords. Because the frescoes had been failures, his hon. Friend advocated Mosaics. He entirely differed from his hon. Friend on the question of Mosaics; and he should like him to bring some high authority who would say that the Mosaics on the Albert Memorial or those at Windsor were satisfactory works. The Mosaics in St. Paul's, which were the works of two of our greatest artists—Mr. Watts and Mr. Stephens—were absolute failures. He did not believe that it would be possible now to obtain Mosaics of a first-rate quality such as would be a credit to the country, and worth the necessary expenditure. If works of the second order were to be executed, the House ought to insist that they should be executed in this country, so that British art and manufacture might receive encouragement. His hon. Friend, who complained that the decoration of the Houses was in an incomplete condition, should remember that the decorations of great national edifices were never completed at one and the same time. There was no great Italian church, for instance, which was not the result of the labour of ages. He could not refrain, before sitting down, from expressing his regret that so unfortunate a statue as that of the late Lord Russell should have been placed in the Central Hall of the House. This statue, which represented the deceased Earl in modern costume, greatly disfigured the Hall, and its erection in such a place was altogether contrary to the views of the architect, Sir Charles Barry. He would suggest to the First Commissioner of Works the advantage of placing in future the effigies of eminent statesmen on the empty pedestals outside the Lobby. In conclusion, he urged the right hon. Gentleman not to yield to the wishes of the hon. Member who had introduced the subject.

MR. SHAW LEFEVER
said, there could be no doubt that the Central Hall was one of the most beautiful features of 46 the Houses of Parliament, and that it would be most desirable to complete its decorations in a style worthy of it; but he did not think it would be wise, because they had a number of vacant panels, and because they had put Mosaics in one, to make haste to fill the others without being certain that the work proposed to be done would come up to the highest standard of art. The existing Mosaic was inserted by Sir Henry Layard in 1869, but did not give general satisfaction. The artist, he believed, had desired that a portion of it should be taken down, with a view to its improvement. Subsequently, a Committee of Artists was called together by Mr. Ayrton. It consisted of Messrs. Herbert, Pope, Armitage, and Poynter, who recommended that the empty panels should be filled with frescoes. The House, however, refused to vote the money that would have been required to carry out that recommendation, and from that day down to the present time no complaint had been made on the subject of the empty panels. His hon. Friend said that the question had been in abeyance for 11 years, and that, therefore, it was now a question of urgency. He drew a contrary inference from the argument of his hon. Friend, and thought that as the matter had been allowed to rest so long, it could not be one of a very urgent nature, and he was fortified in this opinion by the emptiness of the Benches in every quarter of the House. In fact, he could discover no reason for believing that the House looked favourably on the project of his hon. Friend. There would, moreover, be considerable difficulty in carrying out the hon. Member's plan at the present moment—the School of Mosaic at South Kensington having ceased to exist, and the artist having declined to execute designs for the unfilled panels. He was inclined to think that, in the present unsatisfactory condition of Mosaic art, it would be better to leave the panels unfilled than to complete them. Until the House should express a more unanimous desire than any which had hitherto been evinced that the work advocated by his hon. Friend should be undertaken, he should not consider it his duty to ask for a Vote of money for the purpose of filling the empty panels with frescoes.