Volume 1 — INTRODUCTION.

The British Museum was established by Parliament in 1753. In that year, by the statute 26 Geo. II. cap. 22, a trust was created to unite and maintain as one collection the Museum of Sir Hans Sloane, the Cottonian Library, and the Harleian Collection of Manuscripts.

In 1780 an interesting relief, No. 750, was presented by Sir Joseph Banks, and Col. the Hon. A. C. Fraser, of Lovat (1736-1815). Sir Joseph Banks (1743-1820), traveller, botanist, and President of the Royal Society, was a great benefactor to the Library and Botanical collections, but his gifts of sculpture were limited to this relief, and to a relief representing Jupiter and Ceres, presented in 1809.

Two Roman portrait statues, of inferior merit, which had passed into the hands of the British at the Capitulation of Alexandria, in 1800, were placed in the Department of Antiquities, in 1802.

The collection of sculpture which had thus slowly come into existence during the first fifty years of the Museum's history, received its most brilliant accessions during the first quarter of the present century.

The accession of the Townley Collection in 1805 made necessary the erection of a special building in the garden of the then existing Montague House, and also caused the creation of a separate Department under Taylor Combe, for the custody of the antiquities, which had been previously attached to the Library.

Thomas Bruce, seventh Earl of Elgin (1766-1841), whose collection was the next and greatest addition to the British Museum, had been appointed British Ambassador to the Porte in 1799. On his appointment, he resolved to make his time of office of service to the cause of art, and accordingly engaged a body of five architects, draughtsmen and formatori, under Lusieri, a Neapolitan portrait painter, to make casts, plans and drawings from the remains in Greece, and more particularly at Athens. While the work was in progress, Lord Elgin became aware of the rapid destruction that was taking place of the sculptures in Athens. The success of the British arms in Egypt having made the disposition of the Porte favourable to the British Ambassador, a firman was obtained which sanctioned the removal of the sculptures. The whole collection, formed by Lord Elgin's agents, was, after long negotiations, and an enquiry by a Select Committee of the House of Commons, purchased of Lord Elgin for £35,000 in 1816. It consists of sculptures and architectural fragments from the Parthenon, the Erechtheion, and other Athenian buildings; casts, which have now become of great value, from the Parthenon, the Theseion, and the Monument of Lysicrates; a considerable number of Greek reliefs, principally from Athens; fragments from Mycenae and elsewhere; drawings and plans.

In 1824 the British Museum obtained by bequest the collections of Richard Payne Knight (1749-1824), a learned but fanciful antiquarian, and a leading member of the Society of Dilettanti. Payne Knight's collection was especially rich in bronzes, gems, and coins, but it also contained a series of marble portrait busts.

Ten years later the influence of Lord Stratford de Redcliffe was exerted to support Sir Charles Newton in his explorations in Asia Minor. Sir Charles Newton exchanged his position at the British Museum, in 1856, for the post of British Vice-Consul at Mitylene, which he held till 1859, and in that capacity he was able, on behalf of the Trustees, to excavate the sites of the Mausoleum at Halicarnassos, and of the temple of Demeter at Cnidos. He also removed the archaic statues of Branchidae, and collected several minor pieces of sculpture. The excavations on the site of the Mausoleum added four slabs to the series presented by Lord Stratford de Redcliffe in 1840. One additional slab was purchased in 1865 of the Marchese Serra, of Genoa.

While the excavations of the Mausoleum were in progress, the Crimean campaign afforded an opportunity to Col. Westmacott to form a collection of sculptures from Kertch and the neighbourhood, illustrating the later stages of Greek art on the Euxine.

In the years 1860-1861, Captain, now General Sir R. Murdoch Smith, R.E., and Commander E. A. Porcher, R.N., carried out a series of excavations on the site of Cyrenè, and discovered a considerable number of sculptures in marble, and an admirable bronze portrait head, among the ruins of the temples of Apollo, Dionysos and Aphroditè, and elsewhere.

In 1889 and 1891, various sculptures, including a head of Eros from Paphos, and a large capital with projecting bulls' heads from the Cyprian Salamis, have been presented by the Cyprus Exploration Fund.