British Academy: The UK's National Academy for the Humanities and Social Sciences

BA PDF Symposium 2005

26 April 2005

Abstracts

ABOUT THIS EVENT | PROGRAMME

Dr Clare Haynes

'Baubles and Playthings'?: Images and Orthodoxy in the Church of England in the c18th Century

The potential for art to play a role in the Church of England, as ornament and as an aid to devotion, had been recognised by some from the first days of the Reformation. However, the 'image’ was so strongly associated with Popery, that the use of art remained a highly controversial aspect of religious practice. The question of images was also one that frequently highlighted the long-standing but still fraught divisions over the ecclesiological integrity of the Church of England.

For example, in 1725 two altarpieces were erected, one at Faversham in Kent, and another at St. Clement Dane's, London. Neither of these events went unremarked. The altarpiece at St Clement Dane's caused a furore, and was ordered to be taken down by the Bishop of London, Edmund Gibson (?1669–1748). The business was discussed in the press and the painting was satirised by William Hogarth (1697–1764). By contrast, the altarpiece at Faversham seems to have raised little published comment, except from one man, the antiquarian and liturgical scholar, the Rev. John Lewis (1675–1747). In the preface to his history of the parish of Faversham, Lewis discussed the ornamenting of parish churches, arguing strongly that money should be directed towards the benefit of the poor and sick rather than be spent on 'baubles and playthings'. It is probably significant that Lewis' own parish church at Minster, Kent is recorded as having been 'beautified . . . with the consent of the parishioners' in the same year of 1725.

Through a discussion of the reactions to these altarpieces, I will discuss the complex politics of religious imagery in the eighteenth-century church, both in these particular cases and more generally, arguing that reactions to images are useful focuses for generating understanding the post-Restoration Church.

Dr Clare Haynes works in the School of World Art Studies and Museology at the University East Anglia. Her research focuses on the roles of painting and sculpture in the practices and discourses of the Church of England in the 'long eighteenth century'. A number of articles and a book, provisionally entitled Idol or Ornament? Art and the Church of England 1660-1830, will be the published outcomes of this research. Her first book, Pictures and Popery: Art and Religion in England 1660-1760, which is based largely on her PhD, will be published by Ashgate.