Magpies, Squirrels and Thieves (49 page)

Similarly, few of Stephen Wootton Bushell's objects remain on public display to tell his story. Those pieces he sent back to London as an agent, working on behalf of the South Kensington Museum, are not at all easy to identify: his name is not attached to the labels, and only a prefix ‘1883' identifies things which Bushell collected. There are rarely more than a handful of objects on display. I would recommend that anyone wanting a real taste of Bushell's interests and wide-ranging research begins with a copy of
Chinese Art
, which offers a colourful and comprehensive insight into his activities.

Even John Charles Robinson, the most belligerent and ambitious of collectors, could not prevent a new generation from breaking up the collection he treasured. As we have seen, his pieces were quickly scattered after his death at home at Newton Manor on 10 April 1913. By September, many of the drawings were put up for sale, and, by February 1914, works from Robinson's collection were appearing regularly at Sotheby's.
⁵
Before long, the only reference to Robinson's passionate years of searching, haggling and manoeuvring was a short catalogue entry describing the provenance of an object, recording simply that he had once owned it but revealing nothing of the time and energy he had invested in acquiring it.

* * *

Despite the best efforts of so many of the leading Victorian collectors, the life of their collections proved uncertain. Some found lasting homes, and are still significant today: the Pitt Rivers collection remains a valued asset of the University of Oxford; the collections of Sir John Soane and Frederick John Horniman are both publicly displayed in London; over 4,000 objects, pictures and books belonging to Sir Thomas William Holburne continue to form the core of the Holburne Museum in Bath. But many more have been subjected to dispersal, disinterest and neglect. Each was the result of a particular preoccupation, a very personal adventure that proved not to long outlive the collector. Each was a moment in a specific time, a window on nineteenth-century concerns and attitudes, a quirky glimpse of a changing age. But, while the collections themselves may have been broken up, lost or discarded, their stories continue to offer snapshots of a Victorian legacy that has endured. In these collections, we see the evolution of scholarship, professionalism and expertise that informs today's collectors, curators and connoisseurs; we can understand the emerging possibilities for public collecting and accessible display which are the foundations of twenty-first-century museums; we sense a growing curiosity about other peoples and a respect for their objects which helped change entrenched colonial attitudes; we can trace a developing fascination with the ways in which we display and construct our identity through the things we own; and we witness the increasing sophistication and manipulation of a market which still drives much of the collecting world. The collections may not have lasted, but many of the cultural changes that they embodied still resonate today.

Some of the ideas for this book emerged during work on a Ph.D. thesis at the University of Sheffield, and I am indebted to Professor Sally Shuttleworth, now Head of Humanities at the University of Oxford, for the encouragement, guidance and perceptive criticism which set me on my way. As the book developed, however, it took on a character all of its own, and warm thanks is due to the archive staff and a number of specialist curators at the Victoria and Albert Museum who have helped inform and refine the project, especially Julius Bryant, Stephen Calloway, Peta Motture, Marjorie Trusted, Ming Wilson and Hilary Young. I would also like to thank those at the National Museums Liverpool who have given advice on Joseph Mayer, particularly Dr Ashley Cooke, Head of Antiquities, and David Moffat, assistant curator of Decorative Art. Professor Nick Pearce, Head of the School of Culture and Creative Arts at the University of Glasgow, kindly helped me on the trail of Stephen Wootton Bushell and generously shared some of his research.

Particular thanks is due to Tim Bates, for making
Magpies
happen, to Ravi Mirchandani for trusting that it would happen well, and to all the staff at Pollinger and Atlantic Books. It is always a pleasure working with them. I would also like to thank my parents for their continued encouragement and my lovely husband for everything, but in particular for sharing a moment of inspiration that created the book's title.

1
.   
The Building News
. (22 April 1864), pp. 297–8.

2
.   J. C. Robinson (ed.),
The Catalogue of the Special Exhibition of Works of Art of the Medieval, Renaissance, and more Recent Periods, on loan at the South Kensington Museum
, revised edition (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1863), p. 2.

3
.   ‘The New Court, South Kensington Museum',
The Builder
, 3 May 1862, p. 305; ‘The Loan Collection at South Kensington',
Fine Arts Quarterly Review
(1864), p. 20.

4
.   ‘Art Treasures at South Kensington',
Bentley's Miscellany
(October 1862), p. 349.

5
.   ‘The South Kensington Museum and Loan Exhibition',
Quarterly Review,
225 (January 1863), pp. 176–207.

6
.   ‘Les sculptures du musée du South Kensington',
Gazette des Beaux Arts
(14: 1863), p. 458.

7
.   Ibid.

1
.   Report from the Select Committee on the South Kensington Museum (1860), National Art Library (NAL), pp. 10–11.

2
.   ‘Obituary of Sir Henry Cole',
The Times
, 20 April 1882.

3
.   Ibid.

4
.   Henry Cole, speech on 16 November 1867, published in H. Cole,
Fifty Years of Published Work
(London: George Bell, 1884), p. 293. A more detailed discussion of Henry Cole's vision for the museum can be found in Anthony Burton, ‘The Uses of the South Kensington Art Collections',
The Journal of the History of Collections,
14 (2002), pp. 79–95.

5
.   Quoted in Marjorie Caygill and John Cherry (eds),
A. W. Franks. Nineteenth-century Collecting and the British Museum
(London: British Museum Press, 1997), p. 18.

6
.   J. Ruskin, Evidence to the 1857 National Gallery Site Commission; M. Arnold,
Culture and Anarchy
, edited by Jane Garnett (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 32.

7
.   J. C. Robinson,
An Introductory Lecture on the Museum of Ornamental Art of the Department
, quoted in Anthony Burton, ‘The Uses of the South Kensington Art Collections', p. 85.

1
.   
The Times
,14 August 1848.

2
.   G. Reitlinger,
The Economics of Taste: The Rise and Fall of Picture Prices, 1760
–
1960
(London: Barrie and Rockliffe, 1961), vol. I. p. 30.

3
.   
New York Times
, 21 August 1897, p. BR7.

4
.   Gustav Waagen,
Works of Art and Artists in England
, translated into English by H. E. Lloyd (London: John Murray, 1838), p. 98.

5
.   
Punch
, 28 (June 1855), p. 129.

6
.   
The Catalogue of the Soulages Collection
, compiled by J. C. Robinson, with contributions from Henry Cole (London, 1856). Archive of the Victoria and Albert Museum;
The Graphic
, 1:1 (4 December 1869), p. 2.

7
.   Mabel Tylecote,
The Mechanics' Institutes of Lancashire and Yorkshire before 1851
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1957), pp. 69–75.

8
.   Ibid., p. 221.

9
.   It is difficult to be sure of accurate figures since membership, and the number of Institutes, as well as their nomenclature, was constantly changing. In addition to Mechanics' Institutes, there were, for example, Mutual Improvement Societies, Institutes for the Advancement of Knowledge, People's Colleges and Artisans' Institutes. W. A. Munford gives a figure of 610 institutions of the type of Mechanics' Institutes in England as well as twelve
in Wales, fifty-five in Scotland and twenty-five in Ireland, and Jeffrey Auerbach suggests there were 600 Institutes with half a million members. See W. A. Munford, ‘George Birbeck and the Mechanics' Institutes', in
English Libraries 1800
–
1850: Three Lectures delivered at University College, London
(London: Lewis, 1958) and J. Auerbach,
The Great Exhibition of 1851: A Nation on Display
(New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1999).

10
. Report from the Select Committee on Arts and Manufactures, 1835–6.

11
. John Ruskin,
Fors Clavigera
, letter 59, and
The Crown of Wild Olive,
Lecture IV (14 December 1869).

12
. L. Jessop and N. T. Sinclair,
The Sunderland Museum: The People's Palace in the Park
(Tyne and Wear Museums, 1996), p. 5.

13
.
Magazine of Art
, 1 (1878), p. 154.

14
. James J. Sheehan,
Museums in the German art world from the end of the old regime to the rise of Modernism
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 115.

15
. Ibid., p. 116.

16
.
Chambers Journal of Popular Literature, Science and Arts
, 335 (2 June 1860), p. 342.

17
.
The Builder
, 22 June 1872.

18
. John Ruskin, letter to Henry Swan, 13 May 1885, from transcript at the Ruskin Gallery, Sheffield.

19
.
Sheffield Independent
, 11 August 1887, p. 6;
Art Union
, 8 (January 1846), p. 17. The 1872 Nottingham exhibition featured objects on loan from South Kensington; the Halifax exhibition was organized by the town's Mechanics' Institute.

20
. Royal Commission on Scientific Instruction and the Advancement of Science (Devonshire Commission), 4th Report, (1874), p. 14.

21
. For an excellent discussion of the eighteenth-century world of the gentleman's art club, see Peter Clark,
British Clubs and Societies 1580
–
1800: The origins of an associational world
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). Walpole is quoted on p. 78.

22
. C. E. Clement and L. Hutton,
Artists of the Nineteenth Century and Their Works
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1897), quoted in C. Denney,
At the Temple of Art: the Grosvenor Gallery, 1877
–
1890
(London: Associated University Press, 2000), p. 54.

23
. Evidence to the 1857 National Gallery Site Commission, in
Collected Works,
12, pp. 412–13.

24
. Charles Dickens,
Little Dorrit
, edited by Stephen Wall and Helen Small (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2003), p. 67.

25
. ‘The Mausoleum Marbles',
Chambers Journal of Popular Literature, Science and Arts
, 317 (28 January 1860), pp. 49–52 (p. 52); ‘The British Museum',
The London Review of Politics, Society, Literature, Art and Science,
29 (March 1862), pp. 304–5 (p. 304).

26
. Cutting annotated ‘Some Manchester News (Times?) 1845', in scrapbook of George Wallis, vol. II, p. 81, the Library of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

1
.   J. C. Robinson, letter to William Maw Egley, October 1845, copy of Robinson papers, NAL: copies of much of Robinson's correspondence as well as articles, memos, etc. are deposited at the National Art Library, Victoria and Albert Museum, and were consulted there unless otherwise stated. Egley, a painter of miniatures, was one of Robinson's closest friends.

2
.   Quoted in A. McClellan,
Inventing the Louvre: art, politics and the modern museum in eighteenth-century Paris
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), p. 98, a book which also gives an excellent account of the impulses behind the development of the Louvre.