Magpies, Squirrels and Thieves (5 page)

The collectors who took advantage of these misfortunes were often members of the newly influential middle classes. After a series of complicated financial manoeuvres, much of the Orléans collection finally found a home in Britain when it was bought in 1798 by a consortium consisting of Francis Egerton, 3rd Duke of Bridgewater, a coal and canal magnate; his nephew Earl Gower; and the Duke of Carlisle. But, in a reflection of changing fortunes and tastes, it was to be broken up yet further. Only 94 of the 305 paintings were retained for the family galleries. The rest were sold on again, raising over £42,000 to cover expenses, finding their way into the hands of a range of buyers that included four painters, four MPs, six dealers, two bankers and six gentleman amateurs.
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While the sale of the collection into the hands of the Duke of Bridgewater seemed at first to reinforce the impression of ownership by the aristocracy, it was the Duke's new wealth from manufacturing and trade, rather than ancient land rights, that made the deal possible. And the sales which followed showed even more clearly how the finest objects were moving out of the hands of the European elite into the homes of the middle classes – bankers and MPs, as well as those dealers who were making a profitable profession out of what had once been a royal diversion. Collections that had been as much a display of power and influence as cultural appreciation were being broken up and abridged. The very nature of collecting itself was beginning to be transformed.

On the death of the Duke of Bridgewater in 1803, his collection was put on semi-public exhibition in Westminster, open on Wednesday afternoons to those who wrote requesting a ticket, or to artists recommended by the Royal Academy. This was a further demonstration that the idea of the inaccessible, aristocratic
treasure house was beginning to disappear. Increasingly, private collections were getting a public airing, some being bequeathed to national or regional galleries but many more occupying a grey area by allowing restricted access to a vetted group of visitors. It was a long way from full public access: the Bridgewater collection was exhibited grandly in Cleveland House with a staff of twelve luxuriously liveried attendants, giving an impression not unlike a private palace. But it offered the aspiring middle classes, in particular, new opportunities for viewing and it was an indication of changing perceptions of the role of collecting and collectors. Collecting was no longer the preserve of the very rich; objects that had once been in the collections of royalty were now finding their way into much more modest houses and on to sightseeing itineraries. The changing face of European society was being reflected in increasingly widespread opportunities to collect.

Paintings and sculpture, however, still demanded plenty of wall and floor space, and investing in Old Masters required a particular kind of education. In addition, around the middle of the century, there was a dramatic rise in the prices of the kinds of works collectors had traditionally sought. New directions had to be explored. More and more, the emerging middle-class collectors took an interest in different kinds of pieces, particularly those they could pick up at reasonably limited expense, such as old English glass or pewter, decorations for the home – including mirrors, vases and textiles – and objects which might prove to be a shrewd speculation, like Staffordshire ware or silver. Although one or two earlier collectors had been interested in these areas – most notably, perhaps, the eighteenth-century historian and politician Horace Walpole – they had, until now, been largely neglected. By the middle of the century, however, this was changing and several large-scale, highly public sales helped cement the idea that collecting had moved away from its traditional preoccupation with expensive masterpieces and was becoming accessible, educational
and profitable. In particular, in 1855, Christie's in London undertook the sale of the collection of Ralph Bernal, who had died a year earlier. Bernal epitomized the new type of collecting. He was educated and cultured, but as a barrister and MP he was firmly middle class. His apparently mystical ability to hunt out treasure from ordinary bric-a-brac shops earned him the epithet ‘lynx-eyed' in
The Connoisseur
, an illustrated magazine. And the £20,000 he had invested in his collection was turned into nearly £71,000 at the Christie's sale which lasted thirty-two days and was an extravaganza of the metalwork, ceramics, glass and miniatures that were beginning to fascinate collectors.
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The impulses that were evident in Britain were repeated across Europe as the political and social fabric was rethreaded. Shops and dealers sprang up in major urban centres to cater for the increasing number of collectors seeking out treasure. They were not just the aristocratic sons of the ruling European classes, professional artists or dilettantes; they were merchants and bankers, clergy, military officers, wives and mothers. There was a revolution in attitudes, suggesting everything was within reach, for more or less everybody. What made English collectors unique, however, was their taste for showing things off in their homes: ‘They like to
live
surrounded by their pictures and antiquities,' marvelled Gustav Waagen, art historian and director of the Kaiser-Friedrich Museum (later the Bode Museum) in Berlin, something that was ‘virtually unknown elsewhere in Europe'.
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This intimate relationship between a collector and his things intrigued the public. As more and more homes began to display the spoils of private collecting, so the press began to carry detailed coverage of major sales and to record the growing numbers of people seduced by the idea of the collection. After the Bernal auction,
Punch
noted that the country had been gripped by ‘Collection Mania', an ‘enormous quantity of money' changing hands and stimulating ‘the ambition of great numbers of
“Collectors” all over the country'.
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In 1856, Henry Cole came to the conclusion that ‘the taste for collecting' was now ‘almost universal', and, by the end of the 1860s,
The Graphic
, an illustrated political journal, was able to go a step further by claiming that ‘this is the collecting age'.
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During the 1870s,
Punch
embellished the simple reporting of sales, featuring a number of cartoons of dishevelled and obsessive collectors which developed the idea of ‘mania'. From enthusiastic shoppers to expert connoisseurs, the collecting habit was becoming entrenched in the homes of the Victorian middle classes.

Collecting was by no means confined to the home, however. Alongside the growing number of private collectors was a developing habit of public collecting. The new galleries at South Kensington were part of an emerging network of museums across the country. Inextricably associated with education and enlightenment, with order and stability and self-improvement, these offered a perfect outlet for both civic pride and visible philanthropy. Many wealthy and influential Victorians saw it as nothing less than a public duty to provide spacious, airy galleries where people could learn about art and science, and to construct imposing and stately buildings that reflected the confidence and affluence of their communities. Public collecting was active and fashionable.

Establishing a museum sent a clear message about the aspirations of a town, and the apparent generosity and farsightedness of its leading inhabitants. Those with an eye for boosting local dignity and their own reputations found museums an effective way of securing positive publicity and public support: in Sunderland, the Museum and Library, opened in 1879 by US President Ulysses S. Grant, was largely the work of Robert Cameron, a Member of Parliament, Justice of the Peace and temperance campaigner; in Exeter, it was two MPs, Sir Stafford
Northcote of Pynes and Richard Sommers Gard, who proposed and developed the plans for the city's Albert Memorial Museum. All over the country, those with an interest in municipal matters and affairs of state began to look at ways of developing and displaying public collections that would entertain and inform, and before long a web of museums started to grow across industrial towns and expanding cities, offering more and more people the opportunity to see precious and fascinating things.

Despite their sudden high profile, the emerging museums did not appear completely out of the blue. Many were an extension of local associations such as Mechanics' Institutes and Literary and Philosophical Societies, established early in the century to encourage and facilitate the research, discussion and display of disciplines as diverse as geology, anatomy and phrenology, shipbuilding, mine engineering, painting and foreign languages. Mechanics' Institutes varied according to local traditions but, although they ostensibly catered for the working classes, many soon became a means for aspirational white-collar workers to advance themselves while also acting as meeting places for the middle class: the
Manchester Guardian
claimed in 1849 that of the thirty-two Mechanics' Institutes in Lancashire and Cheshire only four had any working-class support.
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One of the results of this membership profile was an increasing number of exhibitions. No longer confined to providing practical instruction for workers, a number of committees turned their attention to the arts. In 1839, Leeds Mechanics' Institute organized an exhibition of ‘arts and manufactures', while in 1848 Huddersfield described its effort as ‘a polytechnic exhibition on a small scale . . . of pictures and other works of Art and objects of curiosity and interest'.
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Perhaps the most actively enthusiastic of the Institutes was Manchester's, which organized five exhibitions, the first from December 1837 to February 1838, and the last finishing in the spring of 1845. These eclectic displays included everything from models of steam
engines, ships and public buildings, to paintings, phrenology and geological specimens but the first exhibition was typical in also featuring over 400 examples ‘of beautiful manufactures and of Superior workmanship in the Arts'.

By the 1830s and 1840s, most industrial centres, many smaller towns and even some rural villages had a Mechanics' Institute, generally offering a range of lectures, exhibitions, libraries and specialist classes. The network flourished so rapidly that by 1850 there were over 700 Institutes, boasting more than half a million members.
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Alongside them, many larger cities also had established Literary and Philosophical Societies, often with roots in the eighteenth century. Combining elements of the academic society and the gentleman's club, they mainly drew their members from among the educated and the influential. But they were not divorced from practical progress and by the 1830s many had evolved into hybrids representing utilitarian, even industrial, interests, while retaining an air of genteel debate. They produced further opportunities for provincial displays, and some even formed collections, often based on a core of natural history objects, with rooms set aside to show everything from prints and paintings to stuffed birds: Newcastle Lit and Phil, for example, opened a special ‘Museum Room' in 1826 to display the collection of books, manuscripts, prints and natural history specimens which had originally formed the private museum of Marmaduke Tunstall at his home at Wycliffe Hall near Bernard Castle in County Durham, and which the Society had purchased in 1822.

The newly developing museums fitted comfortably into this tradition of public learning and debate and increasingly took the next steps in creating and caring for collections. They were part of a general movement towards improving education in general, and art education in particular, with a focus on allowing ordinary people access to extraordinary things. In 1835, when he was asked by the Government Select Committee how to improve the
knowledge of art among the general public, Gustav Waagen replied that better public understanding depended on ‘accessible collections. . . giving people the opportunity of seeing the most beautiful objects'.
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By the mid-century, John Ruskin was again making a public case for places where visitors could experience the finest works of art. ‘Art', he asserted in his 1859 lecture ‘The Two Paths', ‘is always helpful and beneficent to mankind, full of comfort, strength and salvation' and his writing indicated a growing and ambitious realization that public access to art could be linked to an improved understanding of everything from social structures to economics, as well as engendering better skills, work habits, personal conduct and even morals. ‘A museum,' Ruskin claimed, ‘is. . . primarily a place of education. . . teaching people what they do not know. . . teaching them to behave as they do not behave.'
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In 1845, a Museums Act was passed by Parliament, allowing borough councils to raise up to a halfpenny on the rates to go towards funding these emerging museums. This was followed five years later by a Public Libraries and Museums Act. Some towns acted promptly: Warrington opened a rates-funded museum in 1848, and the town council in Colchester agreed in April 1846 to provide a place ‘for the deposit of articles of antiquity or curiosity', although it was not until 1860 that a building was finally opened to the public.
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By the middle of the 1880s, Exeter, Nottingham, Bristol, Liverpool, Wolverhampton, Birmingham, Sheffield, Aberdeen, Leeds, Sunderland and Preston had all taken up the challenge, and so important did a museum become to municipal identity that there was fierce competition to see who would be quickest to create the biggest and best. As museums came to be seen as a symbol of modernity and sophistication, no town of any size wanted to be left behind, and the press fuelled the competition, reporting on efforts nationwide and judging one achievement against another. In 1878, the citizens of Nottingham must have glowed with delight at praise from the
Magazine of Art
:
J. C. Robinson's native town had, it suggested, ‘at a single stride, outstripped all the towns in the U-K- in the race to provide themselves with local museums'.
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