Regency Collectors Buying and Displaying Old Masters in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain - Peter Humfrey - Paul Holberton - relié - Beau livre

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 simi