Private Collecting, Exhibitions, and the Shaping of Art History in London
Issued Date
Copyright Date
2018
Resource Type
Language
eng
Text
Text
File Type
application/pdf
No. of Pages/File Size
213
ISBN
9781138232624
Rights Holder(s)
สถาบันพิพิธภัณฑ์การเรียนรู้แห่งชาติ
Alternative Title(s)
The Burlington Fine Arts Club
Author(s)
Abstract
The Burlington Fine Arts Club was founded in London in 1866 as a gentlemen's club with a singular remit - to exhibit members' art collections. Exhibitions were proposed, organized and furnished by a group of prominent members of British society who included aristocrats, artists, bankers, politicians, and museum curators. Exhibitions at their grand house in Mayfair brought many private collections and collectors to light, using members' social connections to draw upon the finest and most diverse objects available. Through their unique mode of presentation, which brought museum-style display and interpretation to a grand domestic-style gallery space, they also brought two forms of curatorial and art-historical practice together in one unusual setting, enabling an unrestricted form of connoisseurship, where new categories of art were defined and old ones expanded. The history of this remarkable group of people has yet to be told and is explored here for the first time. Through a framework of exhibition themes ranging from Florentine painting to Ancient Egyptian art, a study of lenders, objects, and their interpretation paints a picture of private collecting activities, connoisseurship and art world practice that is surprisingly diverse and interconnected.
Table of contents
PART 1 Introduction
Introduction: A New Gentlemen's Club for London
PART 2 Exhibitions
Paintings and Prints in Europe and Britain
Ceramics East and West
Persia, Egypt, and India
Indigenous and Primitive Art
PART 3 Epilogue
The Club, its Legacy, and the Historiography of Collecting and Display
Appendix A: List of Special Exhibitions Mounted by the Club with Visitor Numbers (where Available) from 1869
Appendix B: Biographical Index of Active Members and Contributors
Sponsorship
Routledge