Sir Charles Hercules Read (6 July 1857 – 11 February 1929) was a British archaeologist and curator who became Keeper of British and Mediaeval Antiquities and Ethnography at the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docume ...

, and President of the

Society of Antiquaries of London A society is a group of individuals involved in persistent social interaction, or a large social group sharing the same spatial or social territory, typically subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations. Soci ...

, following his mentor

Augustus Wollaston Franks Sir Augustus Wollaston Franks (20 March 182621 May 1897) was a British antiquarian and museum administrator. Franks was described by Marjorie Caygill, historian of the British Museum, as "arguably the most important collector in the history o ...

in the first position in 1896, and in the second from 1908 to 1914 and again from 1919 to 1924, after being Secretary since 1892. He began periods as President of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland in 1899 and 1917. He was knighted in 1912 and retired from the British Museum in 1921. He usually dropped the "Charles" in his name, especially after he was knighted, though not consistently. "A man of handsome and even striking appearance", he was a major figure in British museum curation in his day, though he published relatively little.

Career

Read was privately educated, with no university degree before he received an honorary doctorate from the

University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh ( sco, University o Edinburgh, gd, Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in post-nominals) is a public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Granted a royal charter by King James VI in 15 ...

in 1908. His first museum job was as secretary to a senior curator at the South Kensington Museum, now the

Victoria and Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and ...

, where he came to know Franks. Franks then used him to work on the registration of the important collection of Ice Age art, ethnography and other objects of

Henry Christy Henry Christy (26 July 1810 – 4 May 1865) was an English banker and collector, who left his substantial collections to the British Museum. Early life Christy was born at Kingston upon Thames, the second son of William Miller Christy of Woodbi ...

, which were then kept in a flat in Victoria Street, and of which Franks was a trustee. Much of the collection ended up in the British Museum under the terms of Christy's will. In 1880 he joined the British Museum itself as Franks' assistant, marrying the same year. As Keeper he was responsible for beginning the publication of catalogues, guides, books and booklets that brought awareness of the collections to a wider public. He employed the Oxford graduate Thomas Athol Joyce as an assistant in 1903. In his time the department of "British and Medieval Antiquities and Ethnography" still included areas that were later split off, such as ethnography and "oriental" collections beyond Egypt and the Near East, as well as others not obviously covered by its title, including Western ceramics and glass of all dates, and post-medieval European objects. At his retirement, this sprawling empire began to be divided. Read was notable for his knowledge across this vast range, rather than being a specialist in particular areas. Like Franks, he was popular with major collectors, helping to steer several significant donations to the museum, from

J. Pierpont Morgan John Pierpont Morgan Sr. (April 17, 1837 – March 31, 1913) was an American financier and investment banker who dominated corporate finance on Wall Street throughout the Gilded Age. As the head of the banking firm that ultimately became known ...

among others. A rare excursion into archaeological excavation was his supervision of the excavation of the royal Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Highdown Hill in Sussex in the 1890s, which even by the standards of that date was not a model of best practice. One unfortunate episode was his advice to the Ashmolean Museum in

Oxford Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the Un ...

to decline the loan of the Anglo-Saxon Fuller Brooch, which he wrongly believed to be a modern fake; after his day it was bought by the British Museum.

Death

His health deteriorated after his retirement, and he spent the winters on the Riviera, dying in Rapallo, Italy on 11 February 1929.Tonnochy, 86 He was buried in the Cimitero Urbano.

Publications

(selected) * *''The Waddesdon Bequest: Catalogue of the Works of Art bequeathed to the British Museum by Baron Ferdinand Rothschild, M.P., 1898'', 1902, British Museum, Fully available on the Internet archive The catalogue numbers here are still used, and may be searched for on the BM website as "WB.1" etc. *''The Royal Gold Cup of the Kings of France and England, now preserved in the British Museum''. '' Vetusta Monumenta'' Volume 7, part 3, 1904, the first publication of the Royal Gold Cup

Notes

References

*"Burlington": Sir Hercules Read, The Burlington Magazine (no author given), Vol. 54, No. 312 (Mar. 1929), pp. 153–154
JSTOR
* Balfour, Henry, Obituary ''Sir Charles Hercules Read, 6 July 1857 – 11 February 1929'', ''Man'' (Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland), Vol. 29, (Apr. 1929), pp. 61–62
JSTOR
*Tonnochy, A. B., ''Four Keepers of the Department of British and Medieval Antiquities'', ''The British Museum Quarterly'', Vol. 18, No. 3 (Sep. 1953), pp. 83–88
JSTOR

External links

3 photographs online
at the

National Portrait Gallery National Portrait Gallery may refer to: *National Portrait Gallery (Australia), in Canberra *National Portrait Gallery (Sweden), in Mariefred *National Portrait Gallery (United States), in Washington, D.C. *National Portrait Gallery, London, with s ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Read, Charles 1857 births 1929 deaths British archaeologists Employees of the British Museum English antiquarians English art historians Knights Bachelor Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries of London Presidents of the Society of Antiquaries of London Fellows of the British Academy Presidents of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland Fellows of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland