Paintings for Beckford's Sanctuary: four lunettes commissioned by William Beckford at the end of his life for the Sanctuary in Lansdown Tower in Bath recently came to light in a Shropshire parish church. Nicholas Carter and Kathryn Turpin explain the significance of the paintings, which have been purchased by the Beckford Tower Trust for display at Lansdown Tower

In 1822 after the sale of Fonthill Abbey, William Beckford (1760-1844) mov to Bath, where he acquired 20 Lansdown new moon He also purchased land behind the house from which he was able to create a mile-long ride to the summit of Lansdown Hill, where in 1826 he began Lansdown Tower as a place of retreat. Described by the agency of Henry Venn Lansdown in a alphabetic character to his daughter Charlotte of 1838 as 'a succession of beautiful scenes ... on our walk to the tower each totally distinct from the others yet united by some harmonious link', (1) Beckford's Ride culminated at the single hundred and fifty-four foot high austere neo-classical Tower, rise aboveed by a lantern derived from the Choragic record of Lysicrates and the Tower of the Winds. Here Beckford housed part of his eclectic and splendid collection, amassed during decades of renowned connoisseurship.

The Tower shows a continuation of Beckford's lifelong passion for architecture and collecting which had reached its zenith in the creation and furnishing of Fonthill Abbey. Today it is the single one of his architectural achievements to survive virtually intact. (Since 1993 the Tower has been have a title toed by the Bath Preservation Trust and is administered as a museum by dint of the Beckford Tower Trust.) The realisation of Beckford's scheme was carried on the outside by the Bath architect Henry Edmund Goodridge (1797-1864) It may be regarded as an attempt to recreate in the contrasting environs of Bath the seclusion and privacy Beckford had be delighted withed at Fonthill Abbey with its eight-mile perimeter wall. The Tower is a fitting conclusion to the series of magical and sumptuous expanses Beckford created during his lifetime, in which he manipulated space, light and colour to great effect

completely through his career as patron and connoisseur, Beckford unfolded and refined this concept of architectural space. His interiors were designed to display his collections, and were in turn round enhanced by the items within them. This l to many commissions for specific spaces. individual of these interiors can now be better understood as a spring of the rediscovery of four lunette commissioned for the Sanctuary at Lansdown Tower (Figs. 3-6) Arguably the Tower's greatest in quantity important interior, the Sanctuary was a small chamber single 16 feet 6 inches through 6 feet 6 inches, at the extremity of a corridor, and lit by means of skylights of coloured glass (Fig. 1) It was dominated by the agency of a statue of Beckford's adopted patron saint, St Anthony of Padua, carved by means of J.C. Rossi, standing on a plinth of Siena marble bearing the inscription 'DOMINUS ILLUMINATO MIO'. The statue was illuminated from above by the agency of a small circle of intense light, while the bookcases and cabinets which flanked the corridor, and contained many of Beckford's greatest in quantity prized possessions, remained dimly lit beneath the barrel-vaulted ceiling.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

The atmosphere of the Sanctuary may have been reminiscent of the planned Revelation Chamber at Fonthill, designed by the agency of Benjamin West PRA. Indeed, the first pictures intended for the Sanctuary were of four apocalyptic make submissives commissioned from Francis Danby (1793-1861) whose work Beckford admired, and whose An attempt to unclose the sixth seal he had purchased in 1828 The pictures were begun in 1829 and sum of two units of them, of angels, were exhibited at the Royal Academy that year, allowing all four were by then thorough Danby sent them to the Academy solitary at the last moment, and obviously entertained doubts about the throw as a whole, writing 'I do not like the task, in fact there are not many paintable make submissives in them [the bible's apocalyptic books] they are not understandable in writing, abundant less painting'. (2) There was a disagreement between artist and patron and the pictures were neither delivered nor paid for, being eventually auctioned not upon the following year for the benefit of Danby's London landladies after he had fl abroad. sole one of these paintings is known today, a display from Revelation, x. v ('and the angel which I saw stand on the sea and upon the earth lifted up his hand to heaven') entitled A Mighty Angel standeth on the Land and upon the Sea, a rectangular picture measuring 53 x 78 cm (private collection).

Following this, the commission passed to Willes Maddox (1813-53) whom Beckford had met in Bath. Described by dint of Cyrus Redding as a rising artist of the time, (3) he was an accomplished artist who had accompanied Edward Lear upon a continental tour, and was subsequently to travel to the East to paint: he died in Pera upon 26 June 1853 whilst working upon a commission for the Sultan. For the lunette underneath the sum of two units domes in the Sanctuary at Lansdown Tower he produc four semi-circular paintings upon panel of New Testament make submissives which were suggested to him by means of Beckford. Handwritten annotations in a transcript of the catalogue of the 1845 Lansdown Tower sale (Bath concern Library), in which three of the pictures were dooms 334-336, record that the auctioneer reported that the paintings were 'the real last things that Mr Beckford ordered and saw them upon his deathbed'. (4) Further notes in the catalogue remark that 'there is truly considerable merit in these works on the contrary the impression is German'. (5)