I realise I used the word Beauty incautiously as a cynosure for my friend’s collection. I don’t think he would say this actually. I think he feels he’s making up for lost time when nobody encouraged him to collect anything and he wants to be surrounded by art and antiques that gives him a sense of who he thinks he is. Kenneth Clark’s comment is in the preface to the Douglas Cooper edited book called Great Private Collections published in the 1960s. These of course were the varied collections of largely wealthy men. Clark does not really deal with the impulse to collect by those of lesser means, the lesser mortals who don’t just want to own ephemera, old LPs or bus tickets!
I think your article fascinating, Rufus, but there are a couple of points you don’t make but which I believe you omit. First, invoking Duveen is problematic. Behrman was a dramatist and satirist who turned a spiteful memoir by Duveen’s former lawyer Louis Levy into the rollicking bio we all know. It needs being treated with caution for its stories which Edward Fowles decided not worth overriding when shown the MSS as they made Duveen look like a genteel scallywag not a shrewd businessman. There is evidence in the Duveen Archive that Duveen initially helped collectors form concentrated collections for the prestige of the new owners, but also because it suited his business model. Later, even when his reliance on BB and other scholars began to wane somewhat mid 30s he was happy to promote variety in collections as more gemütlich for those people who loved owning beautiful things but weren’t driven by the need to only own say Italian Renaissance or 18th century French. Second, collectors are reliant on what appears on the market, whether they be whole collections dispersed via auction or through a dealer, or individual items found through many sources from flea markets to private sales from aristocratic collections. Third, collectors, like my best friend, collect beauty within a price bracket of affordability; my friend pushes his finances as far as he dare without bankrupting himself, but acquires occasionally very fine things that are not presently fashionable, or dealers and private collectors and agents may have missed. He’s certainly building his collections of glass, bronze, silver and pictures as a way of furnishing his home, but it’s constrained by the income of a civil servant and by the vagaries of the market, advice I provide as an art historian, and luck!
Thanks Stephen, I too enjoyed Behrman's book / articles, but it was clear they were written from a position of journalistic entertainment, and not with a scientific approach. Duveen cannot be ignored as a progenitor of some of the great collections today, in spite of the problems. Is Larry Gagosian the Duveen of today - I don't know? In my piece, rather than look at practical considerations, which are of course critical in what one ends up with as a collector (as you point out economic means, availability, scrupulousness of the advisor/ dealer), I wanted to enquire and think about the impulse to collect at all, regardless of funds or other practicalities. It's interesting that your friend collects for reasons of (subjective) beauty - but so many other collections are collected for so many other reasons, regardless of constraints and I wanted to suggest what those reasons might be as a way to explain our motivation to collect. Thanks for reading and for taking time to comment - please do share.
I realise I used the word Beauty incautiously as a cynosure for my friend’s collection. I don’t think he would say this actually. I think he feels he’s making up for lost time when nobody encouraged him to collect anything and he wants to be surrounded by art and antiques that gives him a sense of who he thinks he is. Kenneth Clark’s comment is in the preface to the Douglas Cooper edited book called Great Private Collections published in the 1960s. These of course were the varied collections of largely wealthy men. Clark does not really deal with the impulse to collect by those of lesser means, the lesser mortals who don’t just want to own ephemera, old LPs or bus tickets!
I think your article fascinating, Rufus, but there are a couple of points you don’t make but which I believe you omit. First, invoking Duveen is problematic. Behrman was a dramatist and satirist who turned a spiteful memoir by Duveen’s former lawyer Louis Levy into the rollicking bio we all know. It needs being treated with caution for its stories which Edward Fowles decided not worth overriding when shown the MSS as they made Duveen look like a genteel scallywag not a shrewd businessman. There is evidence in the Duveen Archive that Duveen initially helped collectors form concentrated collections for the prestige of the new owners, but also because it suited his business model. Later, even when his reliance on BB and other scholars began to wane somewhat mid 30s he was happy to promote variety in collections as more gemütlich for those people who loved owning beautiful things but weren’t driven by the need to only own say Italian Renaissance or 18th century French. Second, collectors are reliant on what appears on the market, whether they be whole collections dispersed via auction or through a dealer, or individual items found through many sources from flea markets to private sales from aristocratic collections. Third, collectors, like my best friend, collect beauty within a price bracket of affordability; my friend pushes his finances as far as he dare without bankrupting himself, but acquires occasionally very fine things that are not presently fashionable, or dealers and private collectors and agents may have missed. He’s certainly building his collections of glass, bronze, silver and pictures as a way of furnishing his home, but it’s constrained by the income of a civil servant and by the vagaries of the market, advice I provide as an art historian, and luck!
Thanks Stephen, I too enjoyed Behrman's book / articles, but it was clear they were written from a position of journalistic entertainment, and not with a scientific approach. Duveen cannot be ignored as a progenitor of some of the great collections today, in spite of the problems. Is Larry Gagosian the Duveen of today - I don't know? In my piece, rather than look at practical considerations, which are of course critical in what one ends up with as a collector (as you point out economic means, availability, scrupulousness of the advisor/ dealer), I wanted to enquire and think about the impulse to collect at all, regardless of funds or other practicalities. It's interesting that your friend collects for reasons of (subjective) beauty - but so many other collections are collected for so many other reasons, regardless of constraints and I wanted to suggest what those reasons might be as a way to explain our motivation to collect. Thanks for reading and for taking time to comment - please do share.