Private Art Collections Research Articles

Saint Dymphna by Goossen van der Weyden – An Up-to-date Princess

In 2020, two major exhibitions brought to Tallinn by the PhoebusFoundation, the largest private art collection in Belgium, opened atthe Art Museum of Estonia. While the exhibition at the KadriorgArt Museum exhibited numerous works from the Golden Age of theFlemish painting, the exhibition at the Niguliste Museum made theDymphna altarpiece from the Goossen van der Weyden workshop(ca 1505) its focus. The altarpiece was dismantled in the 19th centuryafter which the panel depicting the decapitation of Dymphna was lost.The exhibition was accompanied by a monograph reflecting on themajor topics connected to the Dymphna altarpiece and presentingthe results of the conservation work carried out between 2017 and2020. One of the aspects the book considers is the material culturerepresented in the Dymphna altarpiece.The clothing and textiles of the protagonists receive special attentionin the monograph, for example when questions such as if the garmentsworn by the princess and the king are fashionable or out of dateare raised. This article explores this question taking the portraitsof Habsburg and Castilian princesses painted in around 1500 andnot used for comparison in the monograph as its point of departure.In this paper I propose, that the clothing and accessories ofprincess Dymphna are modelled on the image of contemporaryHabsburg-Castilian princesses, and that such modelling has politicalimplications. The role of Antwerp as a merchant city must also notbe forgotten in this context, as the appearance of luxury objects in anartwork is in direct correlation with the city’s milieu of merchandise,luxury production, and the marketing of the city.

Непальський меч кора з колекції Львівського історичного музею: іконографія, датування та історичний контекст

The kora sword in the Lviv Historical Museum collection is a unique and rare artefact in Ukraine. However, the sword almost did not attract the attention of researchers. Thus, the article analyzes the historical context of the use of koras in the times of the Gurkha wars and the unification of Nepal under the leadership of the Shah dynasty in the 1750s–1760s. The cultural and religious significance of the sword itself is also investigated. In particular, attention is paid to the religious symbolism of the sword in Buddhism, and in this context to the place of kora sword in the religious practices and ideology of the Nepalese (as well as their neighbours) in pre-modern and early modern times. Often kora swords had images of the eye, lotus, or other religious symbols, which in the case of Nepal had (or could have) both Buddhist and Hindu (tantric) connotations. The sword from the Lviv Historical Museum collection has the image of a solar sign. The broader range of parallels of sword and weapon symbolism in the Buddhist art of Nepal and the Himalayas are drawn. The article analyzes in detail the main types of kora swords and their iconography. Basing on a comparison with existing objects from the museum and private art collections around the world, the author draws conclusions about the typification of kora swords. Thus it enables to reveal the type to which the sword from Lviv belongs. The analysis of the iconography of the kora from the Lviv Historical Museum including the images on the blade, the features and texture of the metalwork etc, also helps to date this Himalayan weapon and the region of its origin. The question of history of the Himalayan weapon in the museum, the circumstances of the arrival of the kora sword to the collection of the Lviv Historical Museum requires further research. Museum documents only confirm the arrival of the sword in 1940 from the Museum of Jan III, where it was kept as a deposit. However, there are reasons to assume that the kora sword could be associated with a group of prominent Polish Orientalists who worked in Lviv in the interwar period. The author puts forward a hypothesis about the possible connection of the Nepalese sword, in particular, with Professor Stefan Stasiak, the Indologist and Sanskritologist: the sword could have been brought by S. Stasiak from a trip to India.

From guidebook to guest book

Abstract At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Netherlands was rightly considered ‘the land of collections’. By the end of the century, a new museum culture had emerged, altering for ever both the role and the relevance of private art collections. This essay collects data from two sources – contemporary travel guides and the guest books of the Six collection in Amsterdam – to understand how public access to private collections worked; to determine the social composition of the private art collection visiting public; and to illustrate how that public changed over the course of the nineteenth century.

Частные коллекции как основа публичных музеев Пикассо: проблема выбора и презентации, интенции и реальность

The article reviews the history of several Picasso public museums, which have been based around private art collections. It examines the personal motivations and social conditions that accompanied the conception and realization of the projects. The records of Museu Picasso in Barcelona contain evidence highlighting Picasso’s lasting close friendship with Jaume Sabartés, who donated his private collection to the museum. These documents reveal the dramatic context surrounding Picasso’s citizenship, his persona non grata status, as well as the latent Catalan opposition to state authority. In addition, the article utilizes the case of Picasso museums to highlight and discuss a series of problematic issues related to adapting the modernist artworks, which have been installed within historic buildings and cultural heritage sites.

A.F. Mantel’s Art Collection in Museums of the Volga Region: Reconstruction Experience

A characteristic feature of the artistic life of Russia at the turn of the 19th—20th centuries was the growth in the number of private art collections and the expansion of the social composition of collectors due to the addition of industrialists, merchants and intellectuals. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, these collections became one of the important sources in the formation of art collections of metropolitan and provincial museums of Russia. The article is devoted to one of the most interesting private collections of the Kazan province — the collection of A.F. Mantel, formed at the beginning of the 20th century from paintings and graphics by the leading masters of the World of Art association: A.N. Benois, I.Ya. Bilibin, A.F. Gaush, B.M. Kustodiev, D.I. Mitrokhin, G.I. Narbut, N.K. Roerich and others. The article reveals the fates of once famous works of the artists from the World of Art association, which were shown at the association’s exhibitions and published in well-known books, magazines and almanacs such as Apollo, Libra, Rosehip, At Dawn and others. A.F. Mantel’s collection played an important role in the formation of museums in several cities of the Volga region — Kazan, Tetyushi, Kozmodemyansk — becoming one of the sources of contemporary national art collections. Due to various reasons, the most of the collection, including the part received by museums, was lost in the late 1910s — 1930s. Relying on archival and literary sources and museum collections, the author, for the first time, managed to restore, with a high degree of accuracy, the composition of the part of A.F. Mantel’s collection that was purchased for museums of Tetyushi and Kozmodemyansk, and to clarify the composition of the Kazan Museum’s collection.

Arbiters of Value: The Nationalization of Art and the Politics of Expertise in Early Socialist Romania

In 1948, immediately after the Communist Party came to power in Romania, state officials commissioned a group of art experts to radically transform the existing public and private art collections into a national system of museums. These professionals became the new regime’s arbiters of value: the ultimate authority in assessing the cultural and financial value of artwork, and thus deciding their fate and final location. Newly available archival evidence reveals the specific strategies that they employed, and the particular political needs of the state they were able to capitalize on in order to survive and even thrive under a regime that, in principle, should have disavowed them. Even though many of them had professionally come of age during the interwar period, the art experts managed to make themselves indispensable to the new state. They functioned as a pivotal mediator between state officials and a broader public because they knew how to use the national network of museums to put the new state on display. Through the rearrangement of public and private collections across the country, and the centralization of art in museums, they produced a particular “order of things” meant not only to entice the public to view the socialist state as the pinnacle of progress and as a benefactor to the masses but also to validate their expertise and forge a new political trajectory for themselves. The strategic movement of art objects that they orchestrated reveals the material and spatial dimensions of state-making in early socialism.

Predator. The Looting Activity of Pieter Nicolaas Menten (1899–1987)

The Nazi looting of works of art and cultural goods during 1933–1945 is usually divided into institutionalized and unauthorized, that is, wild one. The former was conducted by state and party special organizations and authorities, while the latter, widespread extensively in the east, was practiced by many Germans on their own account. The author suggests introducing a separate category of “specialized
 looting”, encompassing those who engaged in looting with full awareness – on their own account and/or on commission – and who were proficient in evaluation of the artistic goods and knew where and in whose possession they could be found. In the Reich and in occupied France and Holland there were many such expert robbers. In Poland their number remained small after the initial wave of official confiscations. The most notable exception was the Dutchman, Pieter Nicolaas Menten (1899–1987), who after the war became one of the wealthiest citizens of Holland and owner of a private art collection unavailable to the public.
 The scope, character, and methods of the looting conducted by Menten for his private use in Kraków and Lvov during the German occupation between early 1940 and the end of 1942 make him a very special case in the history of Nazi looting. These aspects are analyzed on the basis of extensive archival materials and evidence collected in Holland and Poland during the investigations and trials against Menten (the first one took place in the late 1940s and was followed by next ones in the late 1970s), who was accused of collaboration with the Germans and the massacre of Jewish inhabitants of the Galician villages of Urycz and Podhorodce in the summer of 1941. Menten was never sentenced for the looting of works of art in Kraków, where he was an appointed forced administrator of four Jewish artistic salons, or in Lvov, where he appropriated art collections and furnishings of several Lvov professors murdered on 4 July 1941. He was never found guilty even though when in January 1943 he left the General Government and went to Holland he took – with Himmler’s special permission – four railway carriages of valuable works of art, gold and silverware, antique furniture, and Oriental rugs. The post-war collection of works of art in Menten’s possession wasn’t liable to confiscation under Dutch law and has become dispersed.

Концепция виртуального музея «Частные художественные коллекции России»

Currently, researches dedicated to the subject of private art collectingtend to appear. Virtual museum «Private art collections of Russia» will help to accumulate such information and bring it to wider audience.

Establishing a Governance Framework for Family Art Collections

Family governance is a term sometimes used to describe the management of a family’s assets by a family office however rarely do you see it applied to a family’s private art collection. Just as family governance is important to ensuring adherence to the family’s value system and successful wealth transfer of financial assets, the same holds true for the family's art assets.

The private art collections

The U nidroit Convention confers to private collectors the active legal right to claim, within international jurisdictions, the return of stolen cultural objects. Through these means, the U nidroit Convention opened a space of cultural freedom that should be developed. It is now important to root this cultural freedom in a social realm and U nidroit should undertake this task. A comparative study of different legal systems proves that there in not a specific legally recognised regime for private collections and less so for contemporary art. Some provisions, although they exist, are completely dispersed.

The 3rd Duke of Bridgewater as a collector of Old Master paintings

In the last decade of his life the Duke of Bridgewater (1736–1803), who had amassed enormous wealth from developing canals in the north-west of England, became a major collector of continental Old Master paintings, thereby founding what was to become the greatest private art collection in nineteenth-century London. His most spectacular purchase was the acquisition in 1798 of sixty-four Italian and French pictures, previously in the Orléans collection in Paris, many of them of outstanding quality. But more than twice this number in his collection were Dutch, including some thirty identified here as bought at the Gildemeester sale in Amsterdam in 1800. The present article traces the development of the Bridgewater collection, from early commissions by the Duke on his Grand Tour of 1753–5 to his late spending spree of the 1790s. It also considers the installation of his growing collection at his London home of Cleveland House, St James’s.

Going east: the Wallace Collection at Bethnal Green, 1872-1875

The nineteenth century witnessed a dramatic expansion of the exhibitionary field, during which private art collections became increasingly removed from their socially exclusive exhibitionary settings to be made available for public scrutiny. The South Kensington Museum was a key agent in the promotion of temporary displays of patrician collections and, between 1852 and 1880, the institution staged twenty-two exhibitions of privately owned works of art. Avidly acquired by British collectors, eighteenth-century French decorative arts occupied a prominent place in those exhibitions, prompting a French writer to comment that ‘les Anglais . . . depuis soixante ans viennent chez nous faire des rafles [et les expositions] de Kensington [en] contiennent les incroyables resultats’. The display of French decorative arts at South Kensington culminated in 1872 when Sir Richard Wallace, heir to the 4th Marquess of Hertford’s collection and fortune, agreed to lend his collection to the museum’s outstation in Bethnal Green for three years. This article will locate the public display of the Hertford–Wallace collection within the context of the contemporary discourse on the didactic mission of art and the perceived supremacy of French goods. It will examine the taxonomies and display strategies prevalent at Bethnal Green, and problematize the contemporary responses to Richard Wallace’s loan.

Managing Art Wealth: Creating a Single Family Office that Preserves and Protects the Family Art Collection

Investing in art, once the preserve of a wealthy elite in Europe and North America, is now global. This expansion of the art market, made possible by the broader dissemination of concentrated wealth and by the globalization of art, has fuelled the tendency to view art as an asset class comparable to stocks or real estate. Only recently, however, has art been viewed through the lens of modern portfolio theory and considered a potential alternative investment as part of a portfolio of assets. Based on this evidence, this study examines the role of art in the overall wealth-management strategy of a single family office and the issues faced by wealthy families in managing a private art collection. Finally the paper offers general recommendations on what constitutes sound art governance in order to preserve and protect a family collection. <b>TOPICS:</b>Real assets/alternative investments/private equity, wealth management, developed, portfolio theory

Microbial deterioration of cultural heritage and works of art--tilting at windmills?

Microorganisms (bacteria, archaea and fungi), in addition to lichens and insect pests, cause problems in the conservation of cultural heritage because of their biodeteriorative potential. This holds true for all types of historic artefacts, and even for art made of modern materials, in public buildings, museums and private art collections. The variety of biodeterioration phenomena observed on materials of cultural heritage is determined by several factors, such as the chemical composition and nature of the material itself, the climate and exposure of the object, in addition to the manner and frequency of surface cleaning and housekeeping in museums. This study offers a review of a variety of well-known biodeterioration phenomena observed on different materials, such as stone and building materials, objects exhibited in museums and libraries, as well as human remains and burial-related materials. The decontamination of infected artefacts, exhibition rooms and depots incurs high expenditure for museums. Nevertheless, the question has to be raised: whether the process of biodeterioration of cultural heritage can or should be stopped under all circumstances, or whether we have to accept it as a natural and an implicit consecution of its creation. This study also highlights critically the pros and cons of biocide treatments and gives some prominent examples of successful and unsuccessful conservation treatments. Furthermore, an outlook on the future research needs and developments in this highly interesting field is given.

Art and activism: projects of John and Dominique de Menil

This lavishly illustrated book is the first to examine the significant contributions of John and Dominique de Menil to art, architecture, film, and the civil and human rights movements. The de Menils, who moved to Houston from France in 1941, amassed one of the world's great private art collections and became passionately involved in the cause of human rights. The volume includes a discussion of the building of the de Menils' art collection; their patronage of modern architecture in Houston; their embrace of modernism; their leadership in Houston's civil rights movement and in human rights projects worldwide; their commissioning of works of art; their involvement in early film education and documentary filmmaking; and their establishment of the Rothko Chapel, the Menil Collection, the Cy Twombly Gallery, the Dan Flavin Installation, and the Byzantine Fresco Chapel Museum. Vintage photographs, including those taken by Henri Cartier Bresson and Eve Arnold, previously unpublished correspondence with artists, and an illustrated chronology all add to this textured tribute to the de Menils' extraordinary achievements.

The Uffizi Library: a collection that documents collections

The Biblioteca degli Uffizi acts as a documentary ‘black box’ for all the notable collecting that has taken place in Florence during the past 500 years. The Library’s collections stretch from the autograph 22-year diary of the 15th-century painter Neri di Bicci and the different editions of Vasari’s Lives of the painters, through the inventories and lists of objects acquired and held successively by the Medici, the House of Hapsburg-Lorraine and the new Italian united kingdom, and to all the memoirs and plans and catalogues of the directors and ‘royal antiquarians’ of the Uffizi Gallery. In addition it contains major works on art history, artists, public and private art collections, exhibitions and many related topics. The Library holds 77,000 printed books and more than 440 manuscripts; its catalogue is shared with the IRIS consortium of art history and humanities libraries and contributes to artlibraries.net through this shared bibliographic database. Several digitisation projects have already been completed or are currently in progress.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the Fine Arts by Morton D. Paley

1120 Reviews Samuel Taylor Coleridge and theFine Arts. ByMorton D. Paley. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2008. xiv+276 pp. ?45. ISBN 978-0-19-923305-2. Morton Paley has again done his impressive record as a Coleridge scholar proud by giving us the firstsustained account of Coleridge's encounters with and myriad responses to the finearts. The absence of amonograph on the topic so far isnot all that surprising. The fineartswere not Coleridge's main interest;his total ignorance of Turner and Constable is striking, and his observations about the fine arts often merely replicate the polite commonplaces of the period. Paley's coherent, detailed presentation ofColeridge's translations of his visual experiences into plans for lec tures, notes, marginalia, essays, and lettershas now finallyprovided us with a far more nuanced view not only of Coleridge's extraordinary ability to find specific words to convey concrete meanings' (p. 20), but also of his wider artistic and intel lectual interests,which were channelled intohis thoughts about unifying principles. What I likemost about thisbook, however, is the greatly enhanced picture ofCole ridge's hitherto under-represented friendships with artists, patrons, and collectors. Coleridge's lifelong quest for a chosen, ideal family often translated into intense, often demanding, friendships. The portrayal of those friendships provides us with a compelling biographical picture ofColeridge's strengths and weaknesses. The most important local connection, begun in 1803, was with Sir George and Lady Beaumont, who also befriended the Wordsworths. The firstchapter isdevoted to their crucial influence on Coleridge's artistic tastes; lateron theBeaumonts would also be instrumental in introducing Coleridge toLondon's artworld. Chapters 3 and 5 elucidate Coleridge's encounters with the London and English artworld; striking among those is the acquaintance with Karl and Elizabeth Aders, who collected so-called northern primitives' (p. 83). Much of Coleridge's knowledge of the fine arts, however, was acquired in thewake of his employment inMalta. On a more general level this introduces us to amore cosmopolitan Coleridge, who frequented the artistic expatriate circles in Italy and who had access to priceless private art collections by virtue of these friendships. One of the strengths of Paley's book is how much we learn about the interactions in the civilized and artistic circles of early nineteenth-century Europe. After all, 'Coleridge had been one of thevery few British subjects to live inRome while it was under threat fromNapoleon' (p. 66). One friendship in particular, which Coleridge at one stage rated second only to his strong attachment to theWordsworths (p. 32), was forged in Rome and was themain reason for his extended stay in the city of five and a half months. The American Washington Allston, an accomplished painter in his own right,was a 'born teacher' and his gracious mentoring of Coleridge in the pictorial riches of Italy led to an intimate friendship. Chapters 2 (Italy) and 4 ('Allston Redux') are primarily devoted to connections with Allston, who also spent the years 1811-18 in London until lack of recognition, complicated by British anti-American feel ings, drove him back to America. Paley's fine evocation of Allston includes the incorporation of largely neglected passages of ekphrasis inColeridge's Notebooks regarding Allston's paintings, as in the case ofDiana and herNymphs, for instance. MLR, 104.4, 2009 1121 The fine description of the emotional significance of Coleridge's interactions with Mary Morgan, Charlotte Brent, andMary and Sara Hutchinson inhis discussion of Allston's The Sisters isparticularly moving (pp. 118-25). Finally, Iwas rather puzzled by the rather perfunctory delegation of Sir Joshua Reynolds to a brief comment in a Prefatory Note and Chapter 5.A more explicit description ofReynolds's immense significance would have benefited those readers who are not familiarwith eighteenth-century art theories. This isa ground-breaking, essential contribution toColeridge studies. Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand Heidi Thomson Wordsworth and theWriting of theNation. By James M. Garrett. Aldershot: Ashgate. 2008. viii+2i4pp. ?55. ISBN 978-0-7546-5783-5. Previous Wordsworth studies have addressed thepoet's deliberate self-fashioning as both writer and thinker, a self-conscious process of presentation and preservation bywhich Wordsworth's authoring of the self?both literaryand autobiographical? informed and obfuscated his...

Zhou Mi's Record of Clouds and Mist Passing before One's Eyes: An Annotated Translation

Subject of this book is the social and cultural history of Chinese art collecting during the early years of Mongol rule in China (the Yuan dynasty, 1276-1368). At the core of Weitz's book is a complete translation of the Record of Clouds and Mist Passing Before One's Eyes (Yunyan guoyan lu), an art catalog written by the Song dynasty loyalist Zhou Mi (1232-1298). This text contains detailed records of more than forty private art collections that the author saw in Hangzhou between 1275 and 1296. The careful annotations, scholarly introduction, and well-researched appendices help to broaden our understanding of the early care and transmission of artworks, the social dimensions of art collecting, and the development of a multi-ethnic society in Yuan China.

Art as politics in the Third Reich

The political elite of Nazi Germany perceived itself as a cultural elite as well. This work explores the elite's cultural aspirations by examining both the formulation of a national aesthetic policy and the content of the private art collections held by high-ranking Nazis. The author demonstrates that these leaders manipulated public policy and their own collecting patterns to articulate fundamental tenets of Nazi ideology. The work begins by tracing the evolution of aesthetic policy from the purges of museum staff and academics labelled as undesirable in 1933 to the confiscation of Jewish-owned artworks in the late 1930s and the organized plundering of art from occupied areas during the war. The author then reconstructs the collections of prominent Nazi officials - including Hitler, Goring, Goebbels, Himmler, Speer, and Ribbentrop - and argues that their private holdings defined their relationships to one another within the Nazi hierachy in addition to reflecting their racist and nationalist beliefs. According to the author, art collecting offered the political elite a way to achieve legitimacy and social standing, thereby providing a common cultural language for the leaders of the Third Reich.

Art of the Commune: Politics and Art in Soviet Journals, 1917-20

n October 1917 the Bolshevik Party overthrew the Provisional Government of Russia, established in February, and replaced it with a Council of People's Commissars committed to destroying capitalism and the bourgeoisie and to establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat, as a prelude to the ultimate creation of a fully society. The previously exiled radical political opposition had become the ruling establishment. Issues of modern art and society were suddenly no longer hypothetical and utopian. They had to be confronted. Hence, amongst the organs of power in the new government was the Commissariat for Enlightenment (Narodnyi komissariat po prosvesheniiu-Narkompros), responsible for education and culture, with a separate Department of Fine Arts (Otdel Izobrazitelnykh Iskusstv-IZO). The profound political and social changes posed real questions for artists and their associates. What was art? What relationship should exist between art and the new state, between art and the Bolshevik party? Was avant-garde art inherently bourgeois in fact, or did it represent the emergence of an alternative and potentially revolutionary outlook? Could proletarian art itself be created only by authentic workers, or could it also be produced by artists who embraced a proletarian world view? Debates on these complex issues found expression in diverse journals published in the territory of the former Tsarist empire. The two most important publications promoting the ideological position of the Communist party and the government were obviously the newspapers Izvestiia [News], published by the Supreme Soviet, and Pravda [Truth], issued by the Central Committee of the Party. Both publicized important government measures relating to artistic questions, such as the decrees nationalizing private art collections and Lenin's Plan for Monumental Propaganda, and a handful of statements on art, particularly the importance of art for propaganda and agitation. Naturally, the amount of space devoted to artistic questions was severely limited, because the government's prime concern from 1918 to early 1921 was to consolidate the Revolution and successfully fight the Civil War. After the decree of November 9, 1917, banning the counter-revolutionary press,'. only political publications that recognized the government were permitted. These included newspapers such as Maksim Gorkii's Novaia zhizn [New life], the anarchists' Anarkhiia [Anarchy], and the Socialist Revolutionaries' Znamia truda [The banner of work], all of which concentrated on political and ideological questions. When aesthetic matters were broached, Gorkii emphasized the didactic role of art and promoted more traditional values, while artistic innovators such as Vladimir Tatlin and Kazimir Malevich were published in Anarkhiia, suggesting that there were links between the avant-garde and the short-lived anarchist movement after the Revolution. One political body whose chief role was cultural was Proletkult, or the independent proletarian cultural and educational organizations (Proletarskie kulturno-prosvetitelnye organizatsii), which were set up at the instigation of Aleksandr Bogdanov in November 1917 in Petrograd, and rapidly spread throughout Russia, attracting 400,000 members by 1920. Independent of the Party and the Government, Proletkult was specifically organized to create socialist forms of thought, feeling and daily life,2 and a culture that would reflect the values and aspirations of the proletariat. It promoted working-class education and the emergence of a proletarian intelligentsia, arranging classes for adults, organizing schools, studios, clubs, and theaters, and publishing numerous journals such as Gorn [The furnace] (Moscow, 191822), Proletarskaia kultura [Proletarian culture] (Moscow, 1918-21), and Griadushchee [The future] (Petrograd, 191821). None of these magazines was profusely illustrated, although their covers often carried images produced by members of the Proletkult or works of art of an agitational nature, some of which possessed a slightly folk-art flavor. The journals tended to present a rudimentary and essentially unified concept of illustrative art, based on Bogdanov's Marxist theory, according to which the cultural struggle was as important as the political and economic fight for the achievement of socialism: