ART HISTORY:The Fusion of Neo-Classical Principles Edited by Lynda Mulvin Wordwell, 202pp. €35

IT WAS SOMETHING one undertook – that is, if one was a son of the privileged classes. As part of the ritualised coming of age, and as an endorsement of breeding, it was less an educational chore and far more a fabulous adventure.

Travel, as is obvious, broadens the mind. But the traditional European grand tour, funded by one’s wealthy sire, must have been the experience of a lifetime as well as a practical introduction to the classical world, arts and culture. Nor was it a custom confined to the English aristocracy.

In 1746, James Caulfield, the fourth viscount and later first earl of Charlemont, set off from his native Dublin on a tour that lasted eight years. One of his homes is now the Hugh Lane gallery. Caulfield founded the Royal Irish Academy, which itself houses a classical collection. So impressed was Caulfield by classical architecture that he commissioned the Scottish architect Sir William Chambers to design the exquisite Casino – meaning “little house” – at Marino, Dublin. It is Ireland’s finest neo-classical building, an essay in perfection.

In many ways, The Fusion of Neo-Classical Principles, edited by the art historian Lynda Mulvin and based on a conference held at the National Gallery of Ireland in 2009, is itself a modern-day grand tour.

It sets the scene, introduces several of the key players, explores, examines and, most importantly, addresses crucial issues.

It is worth noting that these players tend to be collectors and architects, not archaeologists. The ambivalence surrounding the British Museum’s wonderful collection of classical Greek artefacts – most significantly, some 60 per cent of the Parthenon frieze – has raised moral questions.

Susan Pearce, in CR Cockerell: His Work in Greece and Its Significance – probably the finest of several excellent contributions – puts it all wonderfully into context. Cockerell was a British architect, not an archaeologist, who went to Greece. Pearce writes: “By September 1811 the group had arrived at the temple of Apollo Epicurius in Arcadia, a seldom-visited spot on account of its remoteness . . . Here more sculpture was discovered, and by the autumn of 1812 the entire frieze had been recovered. It too was sold on the quay at Zantes; this time the British made sure to secure its purchase for the British Museum, where it remains.”

The subtext here is that Cockerell’s party had previously been outmanoeuvred by an agent acting for the crown prince of Bavaria.

Pearce continues: “This episode clearly presents a spectacle of several major European powers struggling to outdo one another in the acquisition of ancient Greek material, while concurrently treating contemporary Greece with the kind of contempt that could see her cultural inheritance knocked down on the harbour side of a little port.”

Cockerell also features in Mulvin’s article, in which she notes that his grand tour took place between 1810 and 1817, “during which he spent much of his time recording, drawing and describing the many ancient monuments he encountered”.

Cockerell visited Dublin in 1823, when he was 35, and met the then veteran Irish architect Francis Johnston, whose works include the Bank of Ireland and the General Post Office (both 1818). Johnston, writes Mulvin, “had developed an architectural style that combined austere details with a contrasting plasticity of moulded decoration, for which he is renowned”. The emergence of the neo-classical not only suggested an awareness of classical design, it showed that the classical had moved beyond scholarship to become a commodity.

Conor Lucey, author of Decorating the Georgian Interior (2007), shows how the use of pattern books by Dublin artisans often made for beautiful effects that tended to be selected on aesthetics rather than any cohesive literary context, which explains the frequent randomness of the subject matter.

A response to the classics was often determined by where a viewer happened to be, and this affected artists. Brendan Cassidy considers the Scottish painter Gavin Hamilton (1723-1798). Hamilton is one of the central figures of British neo-classical painting and was devoted to Homer and classical Greece. British grand-tour tourists who loved his paintings while in Rome tended to be less interested in them on arrival back home, where they reverted to the traditional English landscape artists. Rome was important, but the shift in neo-classicism to Greece is easily grasped. During the Napoleonic era, British travellers had no access to Italy and instead went further south, to Greece.

Classical Greek architectural design influenced the Adam brothers’ style of interior as well as exterior decoration. From the second half of the 18th century onwards, the previously dominant aristocratic clients began to be overtaken by the emerging bourgeois and middle class.

Good taste became more than personal expression; it was proof of elevated social status. When the Adam brothers realised that the Greeks had used colour, they also adopted it.

One of the most portable elements of Greek culture was its pottery. Many collectors set out to acquire vases, and among the most enthusiastic was Sir William Hamilton. Having lost an early collection of paintings, an undaunted Hamilton recovered and went in pursuit of pottery, to the point of excavating tombs.

Other collectors found it easier to purchase the attractive copies being manufactured by the British firm of Josiah Wedgwood, whose factory opened in 1769. The first six pots to be fired were decorated with designs copied from Hamilton’s vases and from prints of friezes.

The classical could be admired; the neo-classical could be copied and acquired. Initially a passion shared by the elite, an interest in the antiquities soon saw artists, designers, builders and manufacturers peering over the scholar’s shoulder.

Most of all, the neo-classical stamped its presence on public buildings. This intriguing volume will open many doors.

Eileen Battersby is Literary Correspondent of The Irish Times and author of Ordinary Dogs, published by Faber & Faber