Sir Eric William Dalrymple Maclagen KCVO, CBE

Born 1879

Active: 1905 - 1945

Country of birth and death: England

Museum curator, director

'He was a son of the late Dr. W. D. Maclagan, Archbishop of York, and his second wife Augusta Anne, daughter of the sixth Lord Barrington. Educated at Winchester and Christ Church, Oxford, he joined the staff of the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1905. He was attached to the Department of Textiles, and in 1907 produced a useful 'Guide to English Ecclesiastical Embroideries'. Shortly after this he was transferred to the department of Architecture and Sculpture, where he worked under Mr A. B. Skinner, and on Mr. Skinner's death in 1908 became head of the department.

...On the retirement of Sir Cecil Harcourt Smith in 1924 Maclagan was appointed director and secretary of the museum. He made great strides in humanizing the museum by such developments as the extensive sale of picture post-cards and Christmas cards of museum objects, the issue of a popular series of sixpenny picture books (his own 'Children in Sculpture' and 'Portrait Busts' are good examples), the arrangement of lantern lectures open free to the public, and the encouragement of guide lecturers. Another valuable step of this kind was the placing on prominent exhibition each Monday of an 'Object of the Week', selected from the museum's principal treasures, with a descriptive label combining scholarship and popular appeal: no one could write those descriptions better than himself. In a wider sphere the prestige of the museum was undoubtedly increased among leaders in the art world abroad owing to his personality and scholarship, his powers as a linguist, and his almost unrivalled knowledge of Italian sculpture.' [Extract from Obituary of Sir Eric Maclagan from
The Times, 17 September 1951
(Issue 52108. © The Times 1951)]

Citing this record

'Sir Eric William Dalrymple Maclagen KCVO, CBE', Mapping the Practice and Profession of Sculpture in Britain and Ireland 1851-1951, University of Glasgow History of Art and HATII, online database 2011 [http://sculpture.gla.ac.uk/view/person.php?id=msib2_1216636445, accessed 02 Feb 2023]