Journal of the History of Collections - Advance Access

Die Munchner Kunstkammer

Warren, J. — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 06:00:05 PST

Louis Marcy. Oggetti d'arte della Galleria Parmeggiani di Reggio Emilia

Wilson, T. — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 06:26:49 PST

The Imperial Museums of Meiji Japan. Architecture and the Art of the Nation

McDermott, H. T. — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 05:25:09 PST

The English Virtuoso. Art, Medicine and Antiquarianism in an Age of Empiricism

Hunter, M. — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 11:48:32 PDT

John Talman. An early Eighteenth-Century Connoisseur

Nurse, B. — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 11:48:31 PDT

The collection of Old Master paintings formed by Sir Archibald Campbell of Succoth at Garscube House, near Glasgow

Humfrey, P. — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 05:57:33 PDT

Garscube House, near Glasgow, once contained one of the most distinguished collections of continental Old Master paintings in Scotland. Formed in the 1820s and 1830s by Sir Archibald Campbell of Succoth (1769-1846), 2nd Baronet, the collection was visited by Waagen on his tour of Britain in 1851, but was dispersed after the Second World War. The present paper seeks to reconstruct the collection, largely on the basis of a manuscript inventory, published as an appendix to this paper at http://www.jhc.oxfordjournals.org.

From vanitas to veneration: The embellishments in the anatomical cabinet of Frederik Ruysch

van de Roemer, G. M. — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 05:57:03 PDT

The elaborate way in which the Dutch anatomist Frederik Ruysch (1638–1731) decorated and presented his anatomical cabinet has raised questions as to whether we should view him as a scientist or rather as an artist. The concept of the collection as ‘baroque monument’ or as merely ‘bizarre’ fails to acknowledge its complexity, as can be demonstrated by quantitative analyses of its contents. Furthermore, these analyses show how the nature of the embellishments changed through time and how the vanitas element gradually made way for statements about the magnificence of the human body and its Creator. In his cabinet, Ruysch juxtaposed the ‘divine embroidery’ of the body with textiles made by human hand, thereby emphasizing the existence of an intellectual entity that was responsible for the human fabric. This way of working concurred with contemporary physico-theological discourses against atheism, in which the so-called argument from design gained dominance.

The Galerie Espagnole and the Museo Nacional 1835-1853. Saving Spanish Art, or the Politics of Patrimony

Howarth, D. — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 08:10:07 PDT

Treasures fit for a king: King Charles III of Spain's Indian elephants

Gomez-Centurion, C. — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 07:00:39 PDT

The practice of collecting exotic animals saw an unprecedented rise at the Spanish court in the eighteenth century, particularly during the reign of Charles III. His most prized specimens were three Indian elephants, regarded as genuine crown jewels and symbolizing the power, wealth and prestige of a great sovereign more eloquently than any other animal. They gave a clear sign of the breadth and strength of his diplomacy, the influence of which extended as far away as India. The interest aroused by their acquisition and the diplomatic procedures involved are examined here, together with the problems encountered in bringing these animals to the Iberian Peninsula and maintaining them in the unusual conditions of the Aranjuez Palace.

The Art Museum from Boullee to Bilbao

Conlin, J. — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 00:07:22 PDT

Popes, kings and the Medici in the eighteenth-century fasti of the Palazzo Mocenigo di S. Stae in Venice

Kragelund, P. — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 11:32:07 PDT

The Venetian Palazzo Mocenigo di S. Stae, once a family residence and today a public museum, holds a collection of eighteenth-century paintings celebrating the exploits of a branch of the renowned patrician family of the Mocenigo, seven of whom became doges of the Serenissima. The article discusses the role of such collections in exalting the status of Venetian aristocrats within the Republic and offers new identifications for a series of paintings by Antonio Stom featuring Mocenigos entertaining the last of the Medici as well as on embassies in Istanbul and London. Establishing strong links between these works and the renowned ‘Arrivals’ painted by Luca Carlevaris, the findings throw new light on two of Carlevaris's most remarkable paintings, The Arrival of the Venetian Ambassadors at the Tower of London in 1707 (Alte Pinakothek, Munich) and The Regatta of King Frederik IV on the Grand Canal in 1709 (Frederiksborg Castle, Denmark).

Rediscovering Grigory Stroganoff as a collector of Egyptian art

Hill, M., Meurer, G., Raven, M. J. — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 21:10:53 PDT

A famed connoisseur of European paintings and of objects of fine art from many cultures, Count Grigory Sergeievich Stroganoff of Rome, Paris, and St Petersburg also had a large collection of Egyptian art. This early Egyptian collection was dispersed with scarcely any record at the time of Stroganoff's death, and so has been known almost exclusively from a slender booklet produced in connection with an exhibition mounted in 1880 in Aachen. The three authors join their own researches from different perspectives to create a portrait of Stroganoff as a collector of Egyptian antiquities.

Making Knowledge in Early Modern Europe. Practices, Objects, and Texts, 1400-1800

Edwards, M. — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 21:10:52 PDT

Enchanted Lives, Enchanted Objects. American Women Collectors and the Making of Culture, 1800-1940

Reist, I. — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 00:35:16 PDT

Encompassing the Globe. Portugal and the World in the 16th & 17th Centuries

Mason, P. — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 00:35:15 PDT

The Countess of Arundel's Dutch Pranketing Room: 'An Inventory of all the Parcells or Purselin, glasses and other Goods now remayning in the Pranketing Roome at Tart Hall, 8th Sept 1641'

Claxton, J. — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 08:26:56 PDT

When the Countess of Arundel (c.1582-1654) left England in 1641 she commissioned an inventory of the contents of Tart Hall, her home on the margins of St James's, which included a chamber known as the Dutch Pranketing Room. The complete text of ‘An Inventory of all the Parcells or Purselin, glasses and other Goods now remayning in the Pranketing Roome at Tart Hall’, is reproduced in the supplementary material relating to this article, available at http://www.jhc.oxfordjournals.org. The original manuscript is located in the archives of Arundel Castle and this transcription is published by kind permission of His Grace, the Duke of Norfolk.

Golden Age collecting in America's Middle West: Chester and Clara Congdon's Glensheen Historical Manor and Raymond Wyer's An Art Museum

Webb, J. D. — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 07:18:08 PDT

In 1916, the director of the Hackley Art Gallery in Muskegon, Michigan, Raymond Wyer [Henniker-Heaton], published An Art Museum. Its Concept and Conduct, in which he described the value of a small, but stellar, collection of art. His vision of the role the museum could play in edifying the general public reflects the ideas of other theorists of the age and legitimized the collecting practice of Chester and Clara Congdon who had begun purchasing art and acquiring other objects around 1900. The items now decorate their home, Glensheen: the Historic Congdon Estate, in Duluth, Minnesota but are not, as often argued, simply an example of interior decoration. Instead the collection must be understood as a self-conscious celebration of their social status and a reflection of their personal values. All of the objects fashion the Congdons into disciplined, cultured, and well-travelled individuals who were purveyors of good taste.

An Ark for England: Esoteric heritage at J. S. M. Ward's Abbey Folk Park, 1934-1940

Ginn, G. A. C. — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 23:42:05 PDT

New Barnet's Abbey Folk Park embodied the unique sensibilities of its director, the antiquary, occult scholar and ‘irregular bishop’ Father J. S. M. Ward. A populist ‘open air’ museum on a pattern that proliferated across Britain after World War II, Ward's museum was also a vehicle for the pentecostal millennialism of his Confraternity of the Kingdom of Christ. The museum, its collection and the manner of its display demonstrates an unusual confluence between occult Christianity and more familiar themes of national heritage and Spenglerian notions of decline in inter-war Britain.

La Passion de L'Art Primitif. Enquete sur les collectionneurs

Massing, J. M. — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 02:48:51 PDT

The inventories of the English royal collection, temp. James II

Barclay, A. — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 05:46:16 PDT

The listing of the paintings and sculptures belonging to King James II survives in three different manuscripts, one of which has only recently been correctly identified as such. An online appendix outlines the contents of this newly identified manuscript and explains how it can be used to establish which works were located in which rooms. Each of the three versions of this list is substantially different from the other two and only by considering them together can they be used to maximum advantage. Most previous scholars have failed to realize that the version they have usually used is the one which contains the least information about how the collection was displayed within the various royal palaces. Taken together, these documents can also shed light on when, how and why the inventories were produced.

Medieval art for America: The arrival of the J. Pierpont Morgan collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Gennari-Santori, F. — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 10:30:28 PDT

The Metropolitan Museum of Art owns one of the most important collections of medieval art in existence, the core of which was originally assembled by J. Pierpont Morgan, president of the Museum between 1904 and 1913 and the most important American collector of his generation. Morgan died in 1913 and, surprising everybody, he did not leave his works of art to the Metropolitan. While the collection was exhibited on loan at the Museum, his son Jack sold more than half of it. Eventually, in 1917, Jack donated what was left – most importantly the medieval section – to the Metropolitan. Focusing on the making and the reception of Morgan's collection of medieval art, the article examines how art-historical research, politics and evolving notions about the public role of art shaped, during the First World War, the transition of works of art from privately owned objects to museum pieces.

Rubens e l'erma ritratto di Ippocrate: La memoria dell'antico in un ritratto di Ludovicus Nonnius

Romano, M. — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 06:32:24 PDT

Rubens's oil portrait of Ludovicus Nonnius includes a depiction of an ancient sculpture, a head on a herm representing Hippocrates, the famous physician, promoter of the Ionic School. It is not a minor detail, for its presence is not merely a decorative allusion to antiquity but has also an ideological significance. In the context of an antiquarian culture founded on the exchange of coins and sculptures, it represents important evidence for the history of collections.

Il contributo affronta la problematica del ritratto di Ippocrate, trasmesso dall'antichità mediante la cultura antiquaria e il collezionismo dei secoli XVI e XVII.

Il dipinto di Pieter Paul Rubens che ritrae Ludovicus Nonnius offre lo spunto di una più approfondita analisi sulla fortuna dell'immagine di Ippocrate, medico di Cos e allo stesso tempo permette di indagare i passaggi e gli interventi operati nel cosiddetto ‘ritratto di ricostruzione' sulla base delle testimonianze archeologiche e numismatiche.

Sotto questo profilo è risultato interessante approfondire l'ambiente degli studi di antiquaria e del collezionismo della seconda metà del XVI secolo ed esaminare l'influenza degli studi classici sulla cultura e sulle modalità espressive del celebre artista olandese.

An influential collector: Tsar Nicholas I of Russia

Rebecchini, D. — Thu, 14 May 2009 13:17:18 PDT

Tsar Nicholas I of Russia (1796–1855) was one of the European sovereigns most firmly committed to guaranteeing the principle of monarchy following the Congress of Vienna. The importance of his political role has, however, overshadowed his role as a collector, patron and promoter of the arts. This article analyzes his artistic education, his tastes and aesthetic orientation and the works he bought for his personal art collection and for the ‘New Hermitage’ museum, which he inaugurated in 1852. By observing various instances in which he influenced the Russian artists of the time and the formation of the Museum's collections, the author shows how the Tsar promoted not only monarchic principles, but also precise monarchic taste and artistic criteria.

Marryat's Burmese curiosities: A second look

Isaacs, R. — Thu, 14 May 2009 13:17:18 PDT

A manuscript catalogue of Captain Frederick Marryat's collection of Burmese curiosities, dated February 1829, was discovered in 2008 at the Royal Asiatic Society (RAS). This paper compares the contents and arrangement of the lists in the RAS catalogue, of which a full transcript is given, with those in Marryat's own manuscript catalogue, enclosed with a letter to the trustees of the British Museum dated 2 December 1826, in which he offered his entire collection to the Museum. When the trustees declined his offer, Marryat arranged that his collection should be displayed in the Bond Street rooms of the RAS. Additional numbers accompanying many entries in the RAS catalogue may throw light on the origin, purpose and authorship of this catalogue. It is postulated here that the additional numbers derive from yet another list, probably the missing ‘descriptive catalogue’ composed by the orientalist and student of Buddhism Edward Upham, who gave three talks based upon it to members of the RAS in November and December 1827.

Success and failure: The tale of two museums

Riviere, P. — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 11:39:22 PDT

Following the Second World War there was an upsurge in interest in what was seen as a fast-disappearing traditional way of life, especially that of the countryside where rapid mechanization was bringing about sweeping changes. Two different organizations simultaneously responded to this in the same way – to found museums in which collections of objects from that disappearing world could be preserved and conserved. The Royal Anthropological Institute proposed setting up a Museum of English Life and Traditions, whereas the University of Reading decided on a Museum of English Rural Life. In this paper the events and personalities involved in these two schemes are described, and how and why the RAI's project failed while Reading's became a success is examined.

Ancient and Modern Gems and Jewels in the Collection of Her Majesty The Queen

MacGregor, A. — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 05:30:48 PDT

The Trower collection: Botanical watercolours of an Edwardian lady

Harris, S. A. — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 05:39:21 PST

Charlotte Trower (1855–1928) is a poorly known amateur botanical artist, who in collaboration with her sister Alice (1853–1929) and the amateur botanist George Claridge Druce (1850–1932), painted over 1,800 scientifically accurate watercolours of the British flora. The purpose of this paper is to investigate Trower's watercolour collection and her collaboration with Druce. This unusual collection, together with an extensive archive of correspondence, shows how fruitful connections were made between artist and botanist and how serendipity influenced both the choice of species painted and the areas from which these species were collected. Both Trower and Druce gained from their relationship. Trower received constructive criticism of her work, together with access to unusual and rare plants, whilst Druce could bask in the reflected glory of an influential lady and enhance his own botanical reputation.