Print Collecting and Popular Culture in Eighteenth‐Century Scotland

Abstract

The most significant area of commercialization in art in the eighteenth century, judged by its impact on British cultural life, was the development of modern engraved print publication. Print collecting was a popular pursuit among the middle ranks and above, and the most common type of collection comprised ‘furniture prints’, dominated by portraits, that were used as wall decoration in houses. Most prints were produced in London, but the market was largely provincial, and a sophisticated system of production and marketing developed over the course of the century to ensure the wide and rapid distribution of this particular type of luxury object. Having outlined the character of commercial print production and provincial distribution in the first half, the essay moves on in the second half to consider some of the reasons why ordinary people sought to own and display prints. Based on samples and case studies of modest print collections in Scotland, which are used to illustrate a particular regional context, the complex and changing rhetorical role of prints relative to other luxury objects within the home is considered. Gender, regional identity, politics and patronage all played a part in determining the character of domestic print collections among the middling sort.