SNOWFLAKED
Sensitive students object to portrait of ‘colonialist’ Curzon ... so Oxford college replaces it with art by female graduate
AN OXFORD college has removed a portrait of one of Britain’s most distinguished statesmen from its hall after undergraduates branded him a colonialist.
The 1913 oil painting of George Curzon, the former Viceroy of India and Foreign Secretary, had hung in the grand dining hall at his former college Balliol for decades.
But it was taken down at the height of the campaign by undergraduates to remove a statue of arch-imperialist Cecil Rhodes and the painting has now been relegated to an office wall.
Last night, critics blamed political correctness and ‘anti-imperiali st i deology’ for the decision, although the university said the picture had been removed for planned restoration and denied it had been hidden away.
It disappeared from prominence in the magnificent dining hall early last year as Balliol undergraduates overwhelmingly backed demands for the toppling of a statue of Rhodes, who is blamed for paving the way for apartheid in South Africa.
Their motion, which backed fellow students in calling on Oriel College to remove the Rhodes memorial, included the line: ‘Balliol has its own colonialist, George Curzon, honoured with a painting hung in Hall.’
As part of a ‘diversity’ drive, it was replaced by paintings including Magdalen, by art student Emily Carrington Freeman, a recent Balliol graduate and the first female artist to be represented in the hall.
Last summer, t he Master of Balliol, Sir Drummond Bone, reassured a descendent of the former Viceroy that, despite ‘the heat generated over statues in Oxford’, the painting was undergoing conservation work.
It was finally completed at a cost of £3,200 earlier this year.
But The Mail on Sunday has now discovered that, rather than being rehung in t he hall alongside
‘Stripping away memories of our imperial past’
portraits of former masters and historic figures such as Charles I, the picture is now in the office of history professor Martin Conway.
Last night, Professor Nigel Biggar from Christ Church, Oxford – an expert on the ethics of the British Empire who has come under fire from fellow academics for saying it was not all bad – said: ‘Oxford colleges are full of overwhelmingly male portraits, so there is a case for more diversity.
‘But I would object if there is a general stripping of our walls of any memory of our imperial past. Our past is full of things, some of which we can be proud, and Curzon was a great man in many respects.
‘ But ri ght now colleges are vulnerable to anti-imperialist ideology, which is shared by some senior members. If Curzon disappears into some back office, I would strongly suspect that political correctness and a too-uncritical deference to anti-colonialist ideology would be the reason.’
But a spokesman for Balliol said: ‘The painting hangs prominently in a busy teaching area for historians, where it often stimulates informed historical discussion and debate among students and academics. It is therefore absurd to allege the portrait has been removed from sight to avoid any controversy about Lord Curzon and his time.
‘The painting was in a very bad state of repair two years ago and had to be sent away from the college for restoration work to ensure its survival.’
Experts said that Eton-educated Lord Curzon had a mixed record while Viceroy of India between 1898 and 1905.
However, Ali Ansari, Professor of Iranian History at the University of St Andrews, described him as ‘one of the finest foreign secretaries Britain has produced’.
While the former Viceroy has been praised for improving education in India, he has been criticised for doing too little to combat famine and for partitioning the Indian province of Bengal in 1905, pitting Hindus and Muslims against each other.