Meet the cast: Henry Cole’s quest for reproductions in France and Germany, 1863

This blog is part of a series on Henry Cole’s travel diaries, three of which are in the V&A’s collections.

From monumental yet intricate copies of medieval tombs to the soaring plaster cast of Trajan’s column, the objects displayed within the famous Cast Courts are some of the most impressive pieces on show in the V&A’s galleries. Their sheer size, combined with the vivid detail of the images and decorations that adorn them is testament not only to the workmanship of those who built the original pieces, but also to the Victorian ambition and ingenuity that made possible the production of these remarkable copies. Assembled in the middle of the nineteenth century from across the world, the story of many of these pieces begins with a man whose lasting legacy shapes the museum to this day: its founding Director, Henry Cole (1808-82).

A School Room For Everyone

The early years of the South Kensington Museum were dominated by Cole’s ambition to make the collection and its display a “schoolroom for everyone.” By seeing, appreciating and imitating the craftsmanship and design of objects from all over the world, both historical and contemporary, the standard of British art and design, but also the ‘taste’ of the public as a whole, would be improved and uplifted. A generous budget allowed the Museum to purchase an unprecedented number of historical objects through dealers, collectors, auctions and, in the case of contemporary works, directly from artists and manufacturers.

As Cole and his colleagues recognised, however, some of the best works of art were either already in other museums’ collections or still in their original contexts in churches, palaces and other buildings across Europe. In order to make these treasures available to the South Kensington audience, the Museum made use of reproductions, buying and commissioning copies and images of important works in a variety of media, whether in the form of plaster casts, electrotypes, drawings or photographs. Unlike today, many of – even the largest – collections of works of art across Europe were not comprehensively catalogued, and thus the best and, in some cases, only way of finding out what might be worth reproducing was to visit these places in person. With this in mind, Henry Cole and the artists and civil servants Richard and Samuel Redgrave, both of whom had worked closely with Cole for many years, were dispatched on a fact-finding mission to France and Germany in October 1863. The museum provided them with a considerable budget of £500 (around £50,000 in 2025 money) to make purchases and “visit the Museums at Berlin, Dresden, Vienna & Munich & report what suggestions they afford for the advantage of the South Kensington Museum.”  

Touring the Continent

Crossing the Channel, Cole’s first stop on this journey was Paris. As as a centre of the nineteenth-century art world, Paris had not only some of the finest collection of works of art from all over Europe, but also a flourishing network of dealers and collectors, artists and artisans. For this reason, the South Kensington Museum employed their own agent, a Monsieur E. Cappe, to facilitate purchases and report on new developments in the art market. With Cappe’s assistance, Cole immediately sought out the city’s premier craftsmen specialising in the production of plaster casts. One such was Alexandre Desachy (1817-86) who was known for his high-quality reproductions of sculptures. In the 1850s, he had pioneered a process by which fibrous textiles, such as Hessian, were mixed in with the plaster for the cast, making his products more stable and durable.  

Amongst other pieces, Cole ordered a life-size reproduction of Donatello’s Saint George from the Church of Orsanmichele in Florence as well as a painted cast of Benvenuto Cellini’s Nymph of Fontainebleau, after a bronze relief that once graced the entrance to one of the French royal castles. Later, he also visited the premises of metalworker Leopold Oudry, whose work for Emperor Napoleon III of France included the production of the first electrotype copies of Trajan’s column. It was perhaps here that Cole conceived of the idea that the South Kensington Museum, too, should have a copy of this important Roman monument.

After a few weeks in Paris, Cole and the Redgraves continued their train journey eastward into the German states, visiting cities such as Berlin, Vienna, Munich, Dresden and Hanover. Much like in Paris, Cole made copious notes on objects in museums, churches and public buildings that he believed should be reproduced for South Kensington. Where possible, he ordered photographs to supplement his records and bought catalogues of collections for what would later become known as the National Art Library.  

Cole’s rigorous sightseeing programme would daunt even the most energetic traveller: within the space of only two days in the Bavarian capital of Munich, Cole visited four museums, the state library, the Royal Palace and no less than four churches, while still finding time to browse antique and curiosity shops for new acquisitions and to make plans for a cast of a sixteenth-century bronze Perseus Fountain from a local caster, S. N. Mark.  

The International Inventory of Objects

As so often in his career, Cole’s ambitions to make cultural and artistic treasures accessible to the public stretched far beyond the confines of South Kensington. Somewhere between Linz and Salzburg along the Austrian Alps, and no doubt under the influence of the long and tiring journey, Cole began to muse on the idea of an International Inventory of Objects, a vast document that would list the finest works in museums across the world. Cole envisaged this as part of a greater effort, encouraging museum institutions and governments to work together to preserve and protect cultural heritage by producing and exchanging copies of important works. Cole was finally able to realise this plan in the 1867 Convention for Promoting Universally Reproductions of Works of Art, which would see the promotion and expansion of cast collections, both in the South Kensington Museum and across Europe.  

Henry Cole would undoubtedly be pleased that even now, more than 150 years after he returned to London with a journal full of notes, drawings and ideas to enrich the museum’s collection with reproductions, the Cast Courts are still a vital part of the V&A. Most recently, Cole’s efforts to preserve and document works of art have found new life in the establishment of the ReACH (Reproduction of Art and Cultural Heritage) project, created in 2017 to coincide with the anniversary of the 1867 Convention and dedicated to using images and copies to preserve heritage at risk from war, climate change, tourism and simply the passage of time. 

This blog post is part of a series reflecting on several travel diaries composed by Henry Cole in the second half of the nineteenth century and which are now being transcribed and contextualized by researchers and PhD students as part of the V&A’s Doctoral Placement programme.