(environ
224
pages)
Regency Collectors - Buying and Displaying Old Masters in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain
Auteur(s) Peter Humfrey (A01)
Editeur(s) HOLBERTON
Ean :
9781915401175
Date de parution :
17/10/2025
Résumé : The Regency was a period of crucial importance in the history of collecting Old
Master paintings in England. As the owners of aristocratic collections in France
and Italy were forced by the political upheavals following the French Revolution
to part with their inherited possessions, Old Masters arrived on the London
art market in unprecedented quantity and quality. This book presents seven
case studies of English collectors of the period, tracing the ways in which their
collections were formed, and analysing the taste that guided them. Also discussed
here are the ways in which these new owners displayed their acquisitions and how
they sought to organise them into a new unity.
Peter Humfrey examines in detail seven notable Regency collectors – the 4th
Earl 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 course
from the upper ranks of society. They nevertheless show, as well as many other
similarities, a number of telling differences. They were from both the higher and
lesser nobility, and from the gentry; they acquired their fortunes (and collections)
through inheritance, but also made them anew; predictably, most of the collectors
were men, but one to be discussed here was a woman; some chose to house their
collections in central London, but others at their seats in the country; and within
the parameters of fashionable taste, the seven show rather different priorities in
their choices of schools, scale, and subject matter. No doubt, too, the collectors
selected here were motivated by different considerations, and fashion, financial
investment, and political and social self-promotion – in addition, presumably, to
aesthetic pleasure – must all have played a part.
For each case study an Appendix lists the paintings they acquired. Together
the appendices may serve to give a general idea of the prevailing taste among
collectors during the Regency period. Among the Italian paintings, the Carracci and
their Bolognese followers (Domenichino, Albani, Guido Reni, Guercino) feature
prominently. Other highly sought-after Old Masters included Poussin, Claude and
Dughet, and no less attractive to the Romantic generation were the contrastingly
wild landscapes of Salvator Rosa.
A commander, expédié sous 48 heures à parution
45.00 €