The Crystal Palace at Sydenham: the Crystal Palace was an integtal part of the Victorian art world, as Robert Thorne discovered at the Dulwich Picture Gallery's exhibition

The Crystal Palace in its next to the first version at Sydenham is best known for the spectacular fate which befell it when it burnt down in 1936 Memories of that fire, which throw downed South London's most prominent landmark, have watched to eclipse the serious application of mind of what the Crystal Palace was meant to achieve. The major benefit of the exhibition at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, organised to mark the 150th anniversary of the opening of the Palace upon its new site, is it has confirmed the importance of the Sydenham enterprise in the art world of the 1850 admitting ultimately entertainment triumphed over edification as its main drift at its inception it exhibited the most advanced mid-Victorian ideals.

In the proces of being mov from Hyde Park to southern London the Crystal Palace remained superficially the same, and its reincarnation was superintended through essentially the same group of men who built the original structure--Joseph Paxton; the contractors Fox Henderson; Owen Jones; and Matthew Digby Wyatt. on the contrary of course they took the opportunity to redesign and enlarge the building, to give it a more permanent architectural result and also redefined its use. Paxton had wanted it to become a winter garden, and part of it was laid on the outside with spectacular tropical plants, on the other hand its main purpose was as a midmost point of rational entertainment, based on permanent displays of architecture, statuary manufactures, natural history and ethnography. There were also stands where visitors could purchase fabrics and objects in the latest tastes, just like visitor-centre stores today.

The greatest in quantity interesting displays were the then Fine Arts Courts, which are highlighted in the Dulwich exhibition and the accompanying work Palace of the People. As 'joint directors of the decoration', Owen Jone and Digby Wyatt conceived of these courts as a way of tracing the evolution of architectural and decorative mode of speechs from the Egyptian, to the renaissance via Greece Rome Pompeii, Moorish Spain and the gothic. Many incorporated plaster casts and reproductions that had been culled on a tour of Europe in 1852 and the displays were intended to throw back the latest archaeological discoveries. The Nineveh Court was partly designed by dint of Henry Layard, who had excavated the buildings upon which it was based, and the Pompeian House was decorated through Giuseppe Abbate, who had wearied halt a lifetime recording ancient Pompeii. Gottfried Semper designed a Pompeian theatre to be set uprighted in the main transept at the Crystal Palace which, had it been built, might also have relied upon Abbate's talents.

As creator of the Dulwich exhibition, Jan Piggott makes a convincing case for the influence of the Fine Arts Courts upon archaeologically-minded painters such as Holman pursue Alma-Tadema and Poynter. Holman chase stayed at a hotel in Sydenham in order to record details form the Alhambra Court for use in his Finding of the Saviour in the fane (1860). These and other artists were attracted by means of Owen Jones's theories on the use of authentic colours.

With in like manner much emphasis on the Fine Arts Courts and Owen Jone Joseph Paxton's contribution is slightly eclipsed. Indeed, the argument of the exhibition would appear to be to be that Paxton's overweening ambitions, particularly for the park and waterworks at Sydenham, were the principal reason for the financial misfortunes that befell the Crystal Palace. Economic necessities forced a change of direction in the 1860 from rational entertainment to fairground sensationalism. one time Blondin was hired to do his tightrope stints people lost interest in the permanent displays, and pretty soon the high ideals of the 1850 were forgotten.

The exhibition 'Crystal Palce at Sydenham' is at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, where it lay opened on 3 February and will race until 18 April 2004. The accompanying volume by J.R. Piggott, is published by the agency of Hurst and Company, ISBN 1 8500

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