Table of Contents

Introduction. Royalty: Collecting at Court: Precursors: Collecting and Patronage in the Tudor Age; Jacobean Antiquarians; The Earl and Countess of Arundel; Charles I and the Whitehall Circle; Dispersal and Commonwealth; The Restoration 1660- 1688. Aristocracy: The Country House Boom The Grand Tour: The First Phase; Town and Country in the Early 18th Century; The Grand Tour: High Summer; Horace Walpole and Antiquarian Taste; Archaeology and Antiquity. Plutocracy: Metropolitan Apogee The Orleans Collection and Napoleon's Bonanza; Tastemakers: William Beckford and Thomas Hope; The Champions of the British School; Le Gout Francais; Hispanophile Collecting; The Lure of Florence. Democracy: Collecting in the Museum Age The World beyond Europe; The Founding of the National Gallery; The Victorian Rich; Eclectics and Aesthetes 1880-1914; Catching Up: Modernism 1880-1945; Specialists and Scholars 1918-1945; The Post-War Scene; London: International Art City since 1979. Appendix: Private Collection Catalogues

About the Author

James Stourton is Chairman of Sotheby's UK. He is the author of 'Great Collectors of Our Time' and 'Great Smaller Museums of Europe' and frequently writes on the history of collecting. Charles Sebag-Montefiore has spent 40 years creating the definitive library on British patronage and collecting, a unique resource that has enabled the research for this book. He is a Director of Ludgate Investments Ltd and other companies and Treasurer of the Friends of the National Libraries, the Friends of Lambeth Palace Library, the Walpole Society and of other charities. He was a Trustee of the National Art Collections Fund between 2000 and 2011.