page_title: Ceilings of the Natural History Museum, London
section_title: Central Hall
hierarchical_section_title: Ceilings of the Natural History Museum, London / Central Hall
caption_attribution_description: Central Hall, Natural History Museum, London
context_page_description: The ceilings of the Natural History Museum are a pair of decorated ceilings in the main Central Hall and smaller North Hall of the Natural History Museum in South Kensington, London, unveiled at the building's opening in 1881. They were designed by the museum's architect Alfred Waterhouse and painted by the artist Charles James Lea. The ceiling of the Central Hall consists of 162 panels, 108 of which depict plants considered significant to the history of the museum, to the British Empire or the museum's visitors and the remainder are highly stylised decorative botanical paintings. The ceiling of the smaller North Hall consists of 36 panels, 18 of which depict plants growing in the British Isles. Painted directly onto the plaster of the ceilings, they also make use of gilding for visual effect.
  The natural history collections had originally shared a building with their parent institution the British Museum, but with the expansion of the British Empire there was a significant increase in both public and commercial interest in natural history, and in the number of specimens added to the museum's natural history collections.
context_section_description: As well as being large, the Central Hall was to be very high, rising the full 72-foot (22 m) height of the building to a plaster-lined mansard roof, with skylights running the length of the hall at the junction between the roof and the wall. A grand staircase at the northern end of the hall, flanked by archways leading to the smaller North Hall, led to balconies running almost the full length of the hall to a staircase which in turn led to a large landing above the main entrance, such that a visitor entering the hall would walk the full length of the floor of the hall to reach the first staircase, and then the full length of the balcony to reach the second. As a consequence, it posed a difficulty to Waterhouse's plans to decorate the building. As the skylights were lower than the ceiling the roof was in relative darkness compared to the rest of the room, and owing to the routes to be taken by visitors, the design needed to be attractive when viewed both from the floor below, and from the raised balconies to the each side. To address this, Waterhouse decided to decorate the 170-foot (52 m) ceiling with painted botanical panels.
  The lower panels will have representations of foliage treated conventionally. The upper panels will be treated with more variety of colour and the designs will be of an archaic character. The chief idea to be represented is that of growth. The colours will be arranged so that the most brilliant will be near the apex of the roof.
  — Alfred Waterhouse, June 1876
  Acton Smee Ayrton, the First Commissioner of Works, was hostile to the museum project, and sought to cut costs wherever possible; he disliked art, and felt that it was his responsibility to restrain the excesses of artists and architects. Having already insisted that Waterhouse's original design for wooden ceilings and a lead roof be replaced with cheaper plaster and slate, Ayrton vetoed Waterhouse's plan to decorate the ceiling. Waterhouse eventually persuaded Ayrton that provided the ceiling were decorated while the scaffolding from its construction remained in place, a decorated ceiling would be no more expensive than a plain white one. He prepared two sample paintings of the pomegranate and magnolia for Ayrton, who approved £1435 (about £130,000 in 2020 terms) to decorate the ceiling. Having obtained approval for the paintings, Waterhouse managed to convince Ayrton that the paintings' appeal would be enhanced if certain elements were gilded.
  Records do not survive of how the plants to be represented were chosen and who created the initial designs. Knapp & Press (2005) believe that it was almost certainly Waterhouse himself, likely working from specimens in the museum's botanical collections, while William T. Stearn, writing in 1980, believes that the illustrations were chosen by botanist William Carruthers, who at the time was the museum's Keeper of Botany. To create the painted panels from the initial cartoons, Waterhouse commissioned Manchester artist Charles James Lea of Best & Lea, with whom he had already worked on Pilmore Hall in Hurworth-on-Tees. Waterhouse provided Lea with a selection of botanical drawings, and requested that Lea "select and prepare drawings of fruits and flowers most suitable and gild same in the upper panels of the roof"; it is not recorded who drew the cartoons for the paintings, or how the species were chosen. Best & Lea agreed a fee of £1975 (about £180,000 in 2020 terms) for the work. How the panels were painted is not recorded, but it is likely Lea painted directly onto the ceiling from the scaffolding.
caption: One of the identical twin balconies running the length of Central Hall, connecting the first and second staircases
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