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, and President of the Society of Antiquaries of London, following his mentor Augustus Wollaston Franks 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 The Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland (RAI) is a long-established anthropological organisation, and Learned Society, with a global membership. Its remit includes all the component fields of anthropology, such as biolo ...

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 in 1908. His first museum job was as secretary to a senior curator at the South Kensington Museum, now the Victoria and Albert Museum, where he came to know Franks. Franks then used him to work on the registration of the important collection of

Ice Age art The art of the Upper Paleolithic represents the oldest form of prehistoric art. Figurative art is present in prehistoric Europe, Europe and Prehistoric Indonesia, Southeast Asia, beginning between about 40,000 to 35,000 years ago. Non-figura ...

ethnography Ethnography (from Greek ''ethnos'' "folk, people, nation" and ''grapho'' "I write") is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures. Ethnography explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject o ...

and other objects of Henry Christy, 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 Thomas Athol Joyce OBE FRAI (4 August 1878 – 3 January 1942) was a British anthropologist. He became an acknowledged expert on American and African Anthropology at the British Museum. He led expeditions to excavate Maya sites in British Hond ...

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

and "oriental" collections beyond Egypt and the

Near East The ''Near East''; he, המזרח הקרוב; arc, ܕܢܚܐ ܩܪܒ; fa, خاور نزدیک, Xāvar-e nazdik; tr, Yakın Doğu is a geographical term which roughly encompasses a transcontinental region in Western Asia, that was once the hist ...

, 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 The Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology () on Beaumont Street, Oxford, England, is Britain's first public museum. Its first building was erected in 1678–1683 to house the cabinet of curiosities that Elias Ashmole gave to the University of ...

in Oxford 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

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{{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