Buying and Displaying Old Masters in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain
The Regency was a period of crucial importance in the history of collecting OldMaster paintings in England. As the owners of aristocratic collections in Franceand Italy were forced by the political upheavals following the French Revolutionto part with their inherited possessions, Old Masters arrived on the Londonart market in unprecedented quantity and quality. This book presents sevencase studies of English collectors of the period, tracing the ways in which theircollections were formed, and analysing the taste that guided them. Also discussedhere are the ways in which these new owners displayed their acquisitions and howthey sought to organise them into a new unity.Peter Humfrey examines in detail seven notable Regency collectors – the 4thEarl Darnley, the 2nd Earl Grosvenor, Amabel de Grey, Sir Richard Colt Hoare,Philip John Miles, Samuel Rogers, and the 5th Earl Cowper. All were of coursefrom the upper ranks of society. They nevertheless show, as well as many othersimilarities, a number of telling differences. They were from both the higher andlesser nobility, and from the gentry; they acquired their fortunes (and collections)through inheritance, but also made them anew; predictably, most of the collectorswere men, but one to be discussed here was a woman; some chose to house theircollections in central London, but others at their seats in the country; and withinthe parameters of fashionable taste, the seven show rather different priorities intheir choices of schools, scale, and subject matter. No doubt, too, the collectorsselected here were motivated by different considerations, and fashion, financialinvestment, and political and social self-promotion – in addition, presumably, toaesthetic pleasure – must all have played a part.For each case study an Appendix lists the paintings they acquired. Togetherthe appendices may serve to give a general idea of the prevailing taste amongcollectors during the Regency period. Among the Italian paintings, the Carracci andtheir Bolognese followers (Domenichino, Albani, Guido Reni, Guercino) featureprominently. Other highly sought-after Old Masters included Poussin, Claude andDughet, and no less attractive to the Romantic generation were the contrastinglywild landscapes of Salvator Rosa.
