ABSTRACT
The quotation that heads this chapter is taken from a conversation Oscar Wilde is reported to have had with the artist Herbert Schmalz (Ellmann 1987: 245). Schmalz was just leaving one of Lady Wilde’s strange salon gatherings when Oscar stopped him. ‘Ah, Schmalz! leaving Mamma so soon?’ ‘Yes, I have a picture I must get on with.’ ‘Might I ask, what subject?’ ‘A Viking picture.’ ‘But my dear Schmalz . . . why so far back? You know, where archaeology begins, art ceases.’ Oscar Wilde made other comments about archaeology (in most cases he means what we nowadays would call ‘antiquarianism’), for example: ‘As regards archaeology, then, avoid it altogether: archaeology is merely the science of making excuses for bad art’ (Jackson 1991: 124). Sometimes he seems to have had ‘real’ archaeologists in mind: they ‘spend their lives in verifying the birthplaces of nobodies, and estimate the value of a work of art by its date or its decay’ (Jackson 1991: 48).
