Rupert Forbes Gunnis(11 March 1899 – 31 July 1965) was an English collector and historian of British sculpture. He is best known for hisDictionary of British Sculptors 1660–1851,which "revolutionized the study of British sculpture, providing the foundation for all later studies on the subject".[1]
Life
editBorn inCadogan Square,London,Gunnis was educated atEton College.In 1923 he entered theColonial Service,serving as private secretary to theGovernor of Uganda(1923–1926) and then theGovernor of Cyprus,Sir Ronald Storrs(November 1926 – June 1932). From 1932 to 1935 he worked as Inspector of Antiquities for theCyprus Museum.[2][3][4]Although Gunnis was a government official he acquired and sold antiquities illegally.[5]In 1936 he was appointed as a member of the Antiquities Advisory board,[6]and published his important bookHistoric Cyprus. A guide to its towns and villages, monasteries and castleswhich remains an important resource on Medieval and Ottoman monuments in Cyprus.[5]For his research he visited 670 villages and recorded 1800 churches and chapels.[7]He undertook small excavations on behalf of the Cyprus Museum although none of them were published, he excavated atEnkomiin 1927, atStyllionear Famagusta in 1928 and at the cemetery at the site ofKaparkainMarion.[4]
Returning to England in 1939, Gunnis inherited a large fortune with which he settled at Hungershall Lodge with his Turkish Cypriot life partner Namuk Kemal inTunbridge Wellsand pursued his antiquarian interests. Around 1942 he began compiling an index of monumental sculptors: this may have originally been intended for inclusion inKatharine Esdaile's projectedDictionary of British Sculptors,and after her death in 1950 he published hisDictionary of British Sculptors 1660–1851(completed in 1951 and published in 1953;[1][8]2nd ed. 1968). An expanded third edition was published in 2009 byIngrid Roscoeand a team of scholars at theHenry Moore Institute.[8]
Rupert Gunnis died, aged 66, atStratfield Saye,theDuke of Wellington's estate halfway betweenReadingandBasingstoke.He is buried in the Streatfeild Mausoleum inChiddingstonechurchyard, Kent (Streatfeildwas his mother's maiden name). He left estate valued at £132,279.
The authorEvelyn Berckmandedicated her 1967 novelThe Heir of Starvelingsto Rupert Gunnis. The novel is an apparently true story, based an anecdotal tales told by Gunnis to the author. His contributions to the art world are cited in the foreword and he also plays a named part in the epilogue section, which is set in 1922.
Works
edit- Historic Cyprus: a Guide to its Towns and Villages, Monasteries and Castles,London: Methuen, 1936.
- Famagusta: a short guide for the use of visitors,Nicosia: Government Printing Office, 1934, revised ed. 1936.
- Dictionary of British Sculptors, 1660–1851,1953, revised ed. 1968.
References
edit- ^abTim Knox,‘Gunnis, Rupert Forbes (1899–1965)’,Oxford Dictionary of National Biography,Oxford University Press, 2004, accessed 17 Oct 2010
- ^Reissued as Rupert Gunnis,Historic Cyprus(Mitcham: Orage Press, 2013)
- ^Croker, Ollie (4 August 2021)."Teaching classics with objects? The acquisition of classical antiquities by British schools, 1860–1950".Journal of the History of Collections.33(2): 373–384.doi:10.1093/jhc/fhaa048.ISSN0954-6650.
- ^abSymons, David (1987)."Rupert Gunnis (1899-1965)".Cahiers du Centre d'Études Chypriotes.7(1): 3–10.
- ^abKiely, Thomas (1 December 2017)."Britain and the archaeology of Cyprus - II".Cahiers du Centre d'Études Chypriotes(47): 253–310.doi:10.4000/cchyp.319.ISSN0761-8271.S2CID249114635.
- ^"The Cyprus Gazette 1936"(PDF).
- ^Casson, Stanley (1937)."HISTORIC CYPRUS: a guide to its towns and villages, monasteries and churches. By Rupert Gunnis. Methuen, 1936. pp. 495, 6 illustrations, 7 plans and folding map. 8 s 6 d".Antiquity.11(42): 250–252.doi:10.1017/S0003598X0001276X.ISSN0003-598X.
- ^abThe Gunnis project
External links
edit- Gunnis, Rupert [Forbes]at the Dictionary of Art Historians