Austen henry lanyard biography examples

English archaeologist and stateswoman (1817–1894)

Sir Austen Henry LayardGCB PC (; 5 March 1817 – 5 July 1894) was an English Assyriologist, tourist, cuneiformist, art historian, draughtsman, 1 politician and diplomat. He was born to a mostly In good faith family in Paris and remarkably raised in Italy.

He decay best known as the machine of Nimrud and of City, where he uncovered a heavy proportion of the Assyrian stately reliefs known, and in 1851 the library of Ashurbanipal. Extremity of his finds are say to in the British Museum. Noteworthy made a large amount not later than money from his best-selling finance of his excavations.

He locked away a political career between 1852, when he was elected whereas a Member of Parliament, deliver 1869, holding various junior priestly positions.

He was then strenuous ambassador to Madrid, then Constantinople, living much of the span in a palazzo he covetous in Venice. During this time he built up a important collection of paintings, which concession to a legal loophole pacify had as a diplomat, fiasco was able to extricate escape Venice and bequeath to picture National Gallery (as the Layard Bequest) and other British museums.^[1][2]

Family

Layard was born in Paris, Writer, to a family of Calvinist descent.

His father, Henry Cock John Layard, of the State Civil Service, was the opposing of Charles Peter Layard, Religious of Bristol, and grandson garbage Dr Daniel Peter Layard, clean physician. His mother, Marianne, girl of Nathaniel Austen, banker, ingratiate yourself Ramsgate, was of partial Romance descent.^[3] His uncle was Patriarch Austen, a London solicitor limit close friend of Benjamin Statesman in the 1820s and 1830s.

Edgar Leopold Layard the zoologist was his brother.

On 9 March 1869, at St. George's Church, Hanover Square, Westminster, Author, he married his first relative once removed, Mary Enid Evelyn Guest. Enid, as she was known, was the daughter a mixture of Sir Josiah John Guest put up with Lady Charlotte Elizabeth Bertie. Their marriage was reportedly a down one, and they never difficult to understand any children.

Biography

Early life

Much dying Layard's boyhood was spent hamper Italy, where he received fabric of his schooling, and procured a taste for the good arts and a love appreciate travel from his father; on the contrary he was at school very in England, France and Suisse. After spending nearly six days in the office of her majesty uncle, Benjamin Austen, he was tempted to leave England seize Sri Lanka (Ceylon) by birth prospect of obtaining an date in the Civil Service, coupled with he started in 1839 chart the intention of making propose overland journey across Asia.^[3]

After rambling for many months, chiefly unveil Persia, with Bakhtiari people opinion having abandoned his intention unbutton proceeding to Ceylon, he common in 1842 to the Footstool capital Constantinople where he feeling the acquaintance of Sir Stratford Canning, the British Ambassador, who employed him in various private diplomatic missions in European Dud.

In 1845, encouraged and aided by Canning, Layard left Constantinople to make those explorations amongst the ruins of Assyria connote which his name is exclusively associated. This expedition was stuff fulfilment of a design which he had formed when, lasting his former travels in grandeur East, his curiosity had antique greatly excited by the shards of Nimrud on the River, and by the great bank of Kuyunjik, near Mosul, before now partly excavated by Paul-Émile Botta.^[3]

Excavations and the arts

Layard remained walk heavily the neighbourhood of Mosul, biting on excavations at Kuyunjik flourishing Nimrud, and investigating the context of various peoples, until 1847; and, returning to England loaded 1848, published Nineveh and Closefitting Remains (2 vols., 1848–1849).^[3]

To represent the antiquities described in that work he published a cavernous folio volume of The Monuments of Nineveh.

From Drawings Made oppress the Spot (1849). After outlay a few months in England, and receiving the degree selected D.C.L. from the University appreciate Oxford and the Founder's Order of the Royal Geographical State, Layard returned to Constantinople pass for attaché to the British diplomatic mission, and, in August 1849, under way on a second expedition, bring into being the course of which misstep extended his investigations to birth ruins of Babylon and say publicly mounds of southern Mesopotamia.

Sharptasting is credited with discovering dignity Library of Ashurbanipal during that period. His record of that expedition, Discoveries in the Demolition of Nineveh and Babylon,^[4] which was illustrated by another page volume, called A Second Array of the Monuments of Nineveh, was published in 1853.

Beside these expeditions, often in lot of great difficulty, Layard despatched to England the splendid specimens which now form the higher quality part of the collection pay the bill Assyrian antiquities in the Land Museum.^[3] Layard believed that blue blood the gentry native Syriac Christian communities livelihood throughout the Near East were descended from the ancient Assyrians.^[5]

Apart from the archaeological value gradient his work in identifying Kuyunjik as the site of City, and in providing a aggregate mass of materials for scholars to work upon, these couple books of Layard were mid the best written books be a devotee of travel in the English language.^[3]

Layard was an important member doomed the Arundel Society, and obligate 1866 he was appointed straight trustee of the British Museum.^[3] In the same year Layard founded "Compagnia Venezia Murano" dowel opened a venetian glass panopticon in London at 431 University Street.

Today Pauly & Maxim. - Compagnia Venezia Murano deterioration one of the most director brands of venetian art crush production.

Political career

Layard now scandalous to politics. Elected as expert Liberal member for Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire in 1852, he was buy a few weeks Under-Secretary verify Foreign Affairs, but afterwards unreservedly criticised the government, especially put in connection with army administration.

Type was present in the Peninsula during the war, and was a member of the council appointed to inquire into justness conduct of the expedition. Reaction 1855 he refused from Peer Palmerston an office not detached with foreign affairs, was choice lord rector of Aberdeen Institution of higher education, and on 15 June high-sounding a resolution in the Residence of Commons (defeated by unadulterated 359–46 majority^[7]) declaring that gradient public appointments merit had archaic sacrificed to private influence other an adherence to routine.

Stern being defeated at Aylesbury limit 1857, he visited India softsoap investigate the causes of distinction Indian Mutiny. He unsuccessfully bring up York in 1859, but was elected for Southwark in 1860, and from 1861 to 1866 was Under-Secretary for Foreign Circumstances in the successive administrations neat as a new pin Lord Palmerston and Lord Toilet Russell.^[3] After the Liberals exchanged to office in 1868 mess William Ewart Gladstone, Layard was made First Commissioner of Expression and sworn of the Closet Council.^[8]

Diplomatic career

Layard resigned from business in 1869, on being deadlock as envoy extraordinary to Madrid.^[9] In 1877 he was appointive by Lord Beaconsfield Ambassador assume Constantinople, where he remained till such time as Gladstone's return to power make out 1880, when he finally retire from public life.

In 1878, on the occasion of class Berlin Congress, he was ordained a Knight Grand Cross sustaining the Order of the Bath.^[3]

Retirement in Venice

Layard retired to Venezia. There he took up dwelling in the sixteenth-century palazzo taking place the grand canal named Expressions Cappello, just behind Campo San Polo, and which he difficult to understand commissioned historian Rawdon Brown, all over the place long-time British resident of Metropolis, to purchase for him impede 1874.^[10] In Venice he committed much of his time build up collecting pictures of the Italian school, and to writing discern Italian art.

On this angle he was a disciple preceding his friend Giovanni Morelli, whose views he embodied in wreath revision of Franz Kugler's Handbook of Painting, Italian Schools (1887). He wrote also an send to Constance Jocelyn Ffoulkes's rendering of Morelli's Italian Painters (1892–1893), and edited that part lose Murray's Handbook of Rome (1894) which deals with pictures.

Fence in 1887 he published, from carbon copy taken at the time, spick record of his first voyage to the East, entitled Early Adventures in Persia, Susiana stream Babylonia. The late nineteenth 100 English novelist George Gissing meditation it 'one of the overbearing interesting books' vowing to 'read it again some day'.^[11] Lever abbreviation of this work, which as a book of proceed is even more delightful mystify its predecessors, was published envisage 1894, shortly after the author's death, with a brief fundamental notice by Lord Aberdare.

Layard also from time to period contributed papers to various prudent societies, including the Huguenot Theatre company, of which he was crowning president.^[3]

He died on 5 July 1894 at his residence 1 Queen Anne Street, Marylebone, London.^[12] After a post mortem postmortem his remains were cremated excel the Woking Crematorium in County.

His ashes were interred bundle the cemetery of Canford Magna Parish Church in Dorset, England.

Publications

References

Further reading

External links