¹ Collins, Wilkie, A Rogue's Life (1856; New York, 1879), 49.Google Scholar

² Most of the published catalogs and numerous manuscript catalogs of eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century collections have been studied for this essay. All references to Old Masters are contemporary attributions.

³ Key historiography on eighteenth-century patriotism, national consciousness, and Britishness includes Colley, Linda, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707–1837 (New Haven, CT, and London, 1992)Google Scholar, “Whose Nation? Class and National Consciousness in Britain, 1750–1830,” Past and Present, no. 113 (November 1986): 97–117, “The Apotheosis of George III: Loyalty, Royalty and the British Nation, 1760–1820,” Past and Present, no. 102 (February 1984): 94–129, and “Britishness and Otherness: An Argument,” Journal of British Studies 31, no. 4 (October 1992): 309–29Google Scholar; Wilson, Kathleen, The Sense of the People: Politics, Culture and Imperialism in England, 1715–1785 (Cambridge, 1995)Google Scholar; Claydon, Tony and McBride, Ian, eds., Protestantism and National Identity: Britain and Ireland, c. 1650–c. 1850 (London, 1998)Google Scholar; and Kidd, Colin, “North Britishness and the Nature of Eighteenth-Century British Patriotism,” Historical Journal 39, no. 2 (June 1996): 361–82.Google Scholar For the philosophical sources and linguistic, literary, and artistic manifestations of patriotism, see also Newman, Gerald, The Rise of English Nationalism: A Cultural History, 1740–1830 (London and New York, 1987)Google Scholar; and Griffin, Dustin, Patriotism and Poetry in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Cambridge, 2002).Google Scholar On contestation, see Hugh Cunningham, “The Language of Patriotism, 1750–1914,” in Patriotism: The Making and Unmaking of British National Identity, ed. Raphael Samuel, 3 vols. (London, 1989), 1:57–89; Miles Taylor, “John Bull and the Iconography of Public Opinion in England, c. 1712–1929,” Past and Present, no. 134 (January 1992): 93–128; Harris, Robert, A Patriot Press: National Politics and the London Press in the 1740s (Oxford, 1993)Google Scholar; and Eastwood, David, “Patriotism and the English State in the 1790s,” in The French Revolution and British Popular Politics, ed. Philp, Mark (Cambridge, 1991), 146–68Google Scholar, and “Robert Southey and the Meanings of Patriotism,” Journal of British Studies 31, no. 3 (July 1992): 265–87.Google Scholar On the continuing appeal of French culture, see Eagles, Robin, “Beguiled by France? The English Aristocracy, 1748–1848,” in A Union of Multiple Identities: The British Isles, c. 1750–c. 1850, ed. Brockliss, Laurence and Eastwood, David (Manchester, 1997), 60–77.Google Scholar

⁴ Waterfield, Giles, “The Origins of the Early Picture Gallery Catalogue in Europe, and Its Manifestation in Victorian Britain,” in Art in Museums, ed. Pearce, Susan M. (London, 1995), 42–73Google Scholar; Pears, Ian, The Discovery of Painting: The Growth of Interest in the Arts in England, 1680–1768 (New Haven, CT, 1988), 160–61, 169, 171.Google Scholar

⁵ Neil Harris has advocated that historians of collecting pay greater attention to place, local culture, social connections, and institutional affiliations; see his keynote lecture, “Beyond Biography: Art Collecting as Social Experience,” at the symposium “Turning Points in Old Master Collecting, 1830–1940,” Center for the History of Collecting in America, Frick Collection, New York, 19 May 2007. On cultural patriotism and cosmopolitan exchange, see Newman, Rise of English Nationalism; and Hoock, Holger, The King's Artists: The Royal Academy of Arts and the Politics of British Culture, 1760–1840 (Oxford, 2003)Google Scholar, chap. 4, with further references. For recent discussion of the analysis of historical change in social, cultural, and postsocial history, see Peter Mandler and respondents in the inaugural issue of Cultural and Social History 1, no. 1 (2004); Bonnell, Victoria E. and Hunt, Lynn, eds., Beyond the Cultural Turn: New Directions in the Study of Society and Culture (Berkeley, 1999)Google Scholar; Cabrera, Miguel A., Postsocial History: An Introduction, trans. McMahon, Marie (Lanham, MD, and Oxford, 2004)Google Scholar; Joyce, Patrick, ed., The Social in Question: New Bearings in History and the Social Sciences (London, 2002)Google Scholar; and the essays in the Journal of Social History 37, no. 1 (Fall 2003). For an institutionally grounded study of cultural patriotism in the contemporary art world, see Hoock, The King's Artists.

⁶ Hoock, Holger, “The British State and the Anglo-French Wars over Antiquities, 1798–1858,” Historical Journal 50, no. 1 (January 2007): 1–24Google Scholar, and Empires of the Imagination: Politics, War, and the Arts in the British World, 1750–1850 (London, 2010)Google Scholar.

⁷ Lloyd, Christopher, “George III and His Painters,” in The Wisdom of George the Third, ed. Marsden, Jonathan (London, 2005), 85–99Google Scholar; Arnold, Dana, ed., “Squanderous and Lavish Profusion”: George IV, His Image and Patronage of the Arts (London, 1995)Google Scholar; Parissien, Steven, George IV: The Grand Entertainment (London, 2001)Google Scholar; Conlin, Jonathan G. W., The Nation's Mantelpiece: A History of the National Gallery (London, 2006)Google Scholar; Winter, Emma L., “German Fresco Painting and the New Houses of Parliament at Westminster, 1834–1851,” Historical Journal 47, no. 2 (June 2004): 291–329.Google Scholar

⁸ For the origins of public and national collections across Europe from 1710 to 1820, see Holst, Niels von, Creators, Collectors and Connoisseurs: The Anatomy of Artistic Taste from Antiquity to the Present Day, introduction by Sir Herbert Read, trans. Battershaw, Brian (London, 1967), 204–5Google Scholar; Bazin, Germain, The Museum Age, trans. Cahill, Jane van Nuis (Brussels, 1967), 158–60, 215Google Scholar; Herrmann, Frank, The English as Collectors: A Documentary Chrestomathy (London, 1972), 45–46Google Scholar; Pevsner, Nikolaus, A History of Building Types (London, 1976), 117Google Scholar; McClellan, and Andrew, “The Politics and Aesthetics of Display: Museums in Paris, 1750–1800,” Art History 7, no. 4 (December 1987): 438–64.Google Scholar

⁹ Duncan, Carol, “From the Princely Gallery to the Public Art Museum: The Louvre Museum and the National Gallery,” in Civilizing Rituals: Inside Public Art Museums (London and New York, 1995), 21–47, esp. 34–47Google Scholar; Colley, Britons, 174–77; Fullerton, Peter, “Patronage and Pedagogy: The British Institution in the Early Nineteenth Century,” Art History 5, no. 1 (March 1982): 59–72, esp. 60Google Scholar; cf. Cleve, Ingeborg, “Kunst in Paris um 1800: Der Wandel der Kunstöffentlichkeit und die Popularisierung der Kunst seit der Französischen Revolution,” Francia 22, no. 2 (1995): 101–33.Google Scholar

¹⁰ McClellan, Andrew, Inventing the Louvre: Art, Politics, and the Origins of the Modern Museum in Eighteenth-Century Paris (Cambridge and New York, 1994)Google Scholar; Duncan, “From the Princely Gallery,” 21–33.

¹¹ For the Altes Museum in Berlin, see Moyano, Steven, “Quality vs. History: Schinkel's Altes Museum and Prussian Arts Policy,” Art Bulletin 72, no. 4 (December 1990): 585–608.Google Scholar

¹² Pullan, Ann, “Public Goods or Private Interests? The British Institution in the Early Nineteenth Century,” in Art in Bourgeois Society, 1790–1850, ed. Hemingway, Andrew and Vaughan, William (Cambridge and New York, 1998), 27–44, esp. 28–29.Google Scholar Colley subscribes only to the latter part of this argument with respect to the British Institution (see Britons, 175–76).

¹³ For the concept of collections as extensions of their owners’ identities, see Muensterberger, Werner, Collecting: An Unruly Passion (Princeton, NJ, 1994)Google Scholar; and Pearce, Susan, Museums, Objects, and Collections: A Cultural Study (Leicester and London, 1992), 55–63.Google Scholar For collecting and self-fashioning in imperial context, see Jasanoff, Maya, Edge of Empire: Conquest and Collecting in the East, 1750–1850 (London, 2005), 154–86Google Scholar, and “Collectors of Empire: Objects, Conquests and Imperial Self-Fashioning,” Past and Present, no. 184 (February 2004): 109–35. Helpful conceptual pointers are provided by the literature on collections as semiotics, yet it often lacks in historical specificity; see Mieke Bal, “Telling Objects: A Narrative Perspective on Collecting,” 97–115; and Jean Baudrillard, “The System of Collecting,” 7–24; both in The Cultures of Collecting, ed. John Elsner and Roger Cardinal (Cambridge, MA, 1994). For other sociocultural frameworks, see Appadurai, Arjun, ed., The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (Cambridge, 1986)Google Scholar; and Bourdieu, Pierre, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans. Nice, Richard (London and Cambridge, MA, 1984)Google Scholar.

¹⁴ Steegman, John, The Rule of Taste from George I to George IV (London, 1936)Google Scholar, and Victorian Taste: A Study of the Arts and Architecture from 1830 to 1870, foreword by Nikolaus Pevsner (London, 1970). Dianne Sachko Macleod acknowledges the importance of Sir John Fleming Leicester, Samuel Whitbread II, and Alexander Davison; see her Art and the Victorian Middle Class: Money and the Making of Cultural Identity (Cambridge, 1996), 26–28, 46–47.Google Scholar See also Macleod, Dianne Sachko, “Homosociality and Middle-Class Identity in Early Victorian Patronage of the Arts,” in Gender, Civic Culture and Consumerism: Middle-Class Identity in Britain, 1840–1940, ed. Kidd, Alan and Nichols, David (Manchester, 1999), 65–80.Google Scholar Kathryn Moore Heleniak refers to the exceptions of a “few brave aristocrats,” Sir George Beaumont's and Sir Robert Peel's mixed collections, and Sir John E. Swinburne's and Leicester's British art; see her “Victorian Collections and British Nationalism: Vernon, Sheepshanks and the National Gallery of British Art,” Journal of the History of Collections 12, no. 1 (2000): 91–107.Google Scholar The patronage of British art by Josiah Wedgwood, Samuel Whitbread II, and John Julius Angerstein have been instanced as bourgeois, parvenu patriotism in Colley, “Whose Nation?” 110–111; and in Deuchar, Stephen, Paintings, Politics, and Porter: Samuel Whitbread II and British Art (London, 1984)Google Scholar; see also, more generally, Pears, The Discovery of Painting, chaps. 5–6.

¹⁵ Reitlinger, Gerald, The Economics of Taste, vol. 1, The Rise and Fall of Picture Prices, 1760–1960 (London, 1961), 3–56, 73, 78–79, 113–18, 282–83, 340, 497.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Jameson, Anna, Companion to the most celebrated private galleries of London (London, 1844), xxxvi.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Macleod, Art and the Victorian Middle Class, 28.

¹⁸ Clifford, James, “On Collecting Art and Culture,” in The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art (Cambridge, MA, and London, 1988), 215–51, esp. 223–25Google Scholar; cf. Pearce, Susan, On Collecting: An Investigation into Collecting in the European Tradition (London, 1998), 290–93.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Carey, William Paulet, A descriptive catalogue of a collection of paintings by British artists in the possession of Sir John Fleming Leicester (London, 1819), xii.Google Scholar

²⁰ For the British Institution's using national rhetoric but being seen by many as “a self-serving group of collectors who had come together to keep Old Master prices high,” see Conlin, The Nation's Mantelpiece, 45.

²¹ Deuchar, Paintings, Politics, and Porter, 11.

²² Before 1800, sources overwhelmingly refer to an “English” school of art; “British school” came into use as an alternative from the 1790s, but usage remained inconsistent. Foreign artists practicing in Britain could be counted among the English/British school.

²³ Haskell, Francis, The Ephemeral Museum: Old Master Paintings and the Rise of the Art Exhibition (New Haven, CT, and London, 2000)Google Scholar; Fullerton, “Patronage and Pedagogy: the British Institution in the Early Nineteenth Century.”

²⁴ See my article, companion, to which the present piece is a, “Old Masters and the English School: The Royal Academy of Arts and the Notion of a National Gallery at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century,” Journal of the History of Collections 16, no. 1 (2004): 1–18.Google Scholar

²⁵ The Diary of Joseph Farington, ed. K. Garlick, A. Macintyre, and K. Cave, 16 vols. (London and New Haven, CT, 1978–84), 7:2592; cf. 4:1127–28 (hereafter cited as DJF). And see The Diary of Benjamin Robert Haydon, ed. Pope, W. B., 5 vols. (Cambridge, MA, 1960–63), 4:3, 21, 64Google Scholar; and Conlin, The Nation's Mantelpiece, 43–44.

²⁶ Solkin, David, Art on the Line: The Royal Academy Exhibitions at Somerset House, 1780–1836 (New Haven, CT, and London, 2001)Google Scholar; Hoock, The King's Artists.

²⁷ A dozen such collections are documented; see Deuchar, Paintings, Politics, and Porter, 9, 16, 24–25; Passavant, Johann David, Tour of a German Artist in England, 2 vols. (London, 1836), 1:187–90, 277–85Google Scholar; DJF, 10:3675–76, 12:4279; Heleniak, Kathryn Moore, William Mulready (New Haven, CT, and London, 1980), 161–62Google Scholar; Waagen, Gustav F., Works of Art and Artists in England, trans. Lloyd, H. E., 3 vols. ([London], 1838), 3:45–46, 338–56Google Scholar; and Haskell, Francis, “The British as Collectors,” in The Treasure Houses of Britain: Five Hundred Years of Private Patronage and Art Collecting, ed. Jackson-Stops, Gervase (New Haven, CT, and London, 1985), 50–59, esp. 54.Google Scholar

²⁸ [Prince Hoare], “No. V: Patrons of Living Painters” (11 April 1807), in The Artist; A Collection of Essays, Relative to Painting, Poetry, Sculpture, Architecture, the Drama, Discoveries of Science, and Various Other Subjects, ed. Hoare, Prince (London, 1807), 15.Google Scholar

²⁹ See Sales Catalogues, nos. 87–96, Rare Books and Manuscripts Collection, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT.

³⁰ Waagen, Works of Art, 1:50.

³¹ This alternative has been suggested by Waterfield, Giles, “Art Galleries and the Public: A Survey of Three Centuries,” in Art Treasures of England: The Regional Collections, ed. Foster, Michael (London, 1998), 13–77, esp. 20Google Scholar (this volume was published in connection with an exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, January 22–April 13, 1998). For the context, see Guerzoni, Guido, “The British Painting Market, 1789–1914,” in Economic History and the Arts, ed. North, Michael (Cologne, 1996), 97–131.Google Scholar

³² Hoock, The King's Artists, 248–51.

³³ Sheldon, R. D., “Bernard, Sir Thomas, second baronet (1750–1818),” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. Matthew, H. C. G. and Harrison, Brian (Oxford 2004)Google Scholar, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/2251 (accessed 31 December 2009).

³⁴ [Hoare], “Essay XXI: Galleries of English Paintings” (1 August 1807), in Hoare, The Artist, 3–14, quotation at 3–4.

³⁵ This section of my essay is much indebted to Stephen Deuchar's Paintings, Politics, and Porter. See also Rapp, Dean, Samuel Whitbread: A Social and Political Study (New York and London, 1987)Google Scholar, and “Social Mobility in the Eighteenth Century: The Whitbreads of Bedfordshire, 1720–1815,” Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 27, no. 3 (August 1974): 380–94Google Scholar; Fulford, Roger T. B., Samuel Whitbread: A Study in Opposition (London, 1967)Google Scholar; and D. R. Fisher, “Whitbread, Samuel (1764–1815),” in Matthew and Harrison, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/29231 (accessed 31 December 2009).

³⁶ Deuchar, Paintings, Politics, and Porter, 13; DJF, 7:2744.

³⁷ Deuchar, Paintings, Politics, and Porter, 16, 22.

³⁸ DJF, 2:588.

³⁹ Deuchar, Paintings, Politics, and Porter, 27.

⁴⁰ Chun, Dongho, “Public Display, Private Glory: Sir John Fleming Leicester's Gallery of British Art in Early Nineteenth-Century England,” Journal of the History of Collections 13, no. 2 (2001): 175–89, esp. 177.Google Scholar See also Douglas Hall, “The Tabley House Papers,” Walpole Society 38 (1960–62): 59–122; Cannon-Brookes, Peter, ed., Paintings from Tabley: An Exhibition of Paintings from Tabley House (London, 1989)Google Scholar; Whittingham, Selby, “A Most Liberal Patron: Sir John Fleming Leicester, Bart., 1st Baron de Tabley, 1762–1827,” Turner Studies 6, no. 2 (Winter 1986): 24–36Google Scholar; Albert Nicholson, rev. Selby Whittingham, “Leicester, John Fleming, first Baron de Tabley (1762–1827),” in Matthew and Harrison, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/16369 (accessed 31 December 2009).

⁴¹ Carey, William Paulet, Some memoirs of the patronage and progress of the fine arts in England and Ireland during the reigns of George the Second, George the Third, and His present Majesty; with anecdotes of Lord de Tabley (London, 1826), 107.Google Scholar

⁴² The title of John Buckler's drawing is Sir J. F. Leicester's Picture Gallery, Hill Street, London, executed in pencil and wash in 1806–7. It is at present a holding of the Tabley House Collection, University of Manchester.

⁴³ [Prince Hoare], “No. XII: Gallery of English Painting Belonging to Sir John Leicester, Bart.,” in Hoare, The Artist, 17–18, quotation at 17; cf. Annals of the Fine Arts 2 (1818): 104–10.

⁴⁴ Morning Herald, 12 May 1818.

⁴⁵ See Carey, preface to A descriptive catalogue; Literary Gazette (24 April 1819): 265; cf. Whitley, William T., Art in England, 1800–1820 (Cambridge, 1928), 296Google Scholar; and DJF, 15:5199, 5210, 5345, 5363, 5366; 16:5313–14, 5663.

⁴⁶ William Carey to Sir Richard Colt Hoare, 11 March 1818, quoted in Hall, “Tabley House Papers,” 103, no. 236; cf. Carey, Descriptive catalogue, vii–xi, 18–19, 113; and Young, John, Catalogue of the pictures by British Artists, in the possession of Sir J. F. Leicester (London, 1819)Google Scholar.

⁴⁷ Carey, Some memoirs, 139–40.

⁴⁸ Benjamin West to Sir John Leicester, 25 March 1808, quoted in Hall, “Tabley House Papers,” 100, no. 217.

⁴⁹ In 1818, Leicester claimed to have bought paintings from British artists for 1,600 guineas. See Cannon-Brookes, Paintings from Tabley, 18–19; Hall, “Tabley House Papers,” 67–68; and DJF, 15:5313–14.

⁵⁰ Repository of Arts 7 (1819): 230. See also J. Boyd to Sir John Leicester, n.d., 85.AA.26/54–55, National Art Library, Victoria and Albert Museum, London; and Dagley, Richard, dedication to A compendium of the theory and practice of drawing and painting (London, 1818)Google Scholar.

⁵¹ Examiner (26 April 1819); Carey, Descriptive catalogue, x; cf. Harling, Philip, “Leigh Hunt's Examiner and the Language of Patriotism,” English Historical Review 111, no. 444 (November 1996): 1159–81.Google Scholar

⁵² James Northcote to Sir John Leicester, 17 February 1817, quoted in Hall, “Tabley House Papers,” 86, no.131.

⁵³ Royal Academy Council Minutes, VI, 62–64, 1819, Royal Academy of Arts Archives, Burlington House, London.

⁵⁴ W. F. Witherington, A Gallery Hung with British Pictures, 1824, oil on canvas (69.4 x 90.4 cm.), the Bambridge Collection, Wimpole Hall, Wimpole Estate (The National Trust), Arrington, Royston, Cambridgeshire. Lord Liverpool had personally expressed his preference for a mixed collection of Old Masters with some select British paintings.

⁵⁵ Somerset House Gazette 1 (1824): 370. And see Westmacott, C. M, British Galleries of Painting and Sculpture (London, 1824)Google Scholar.

⁵⁶ Unidentified press-cutting, in Sir John Fleming Leicester's scrapbook, 1826–27, Tabley Archive, R163363, John Rylands University Library, University of Manchester.

⁵⁷ “Obituary: Lord de Tabley,” Gentleman's Magazine 97 (1827): ii, 273.

⁵⁸ Morning Post, 11 July 1827.

⁵⁹ Taylor, W. B. Sarsfield, The origin, progress, and present condition of the Fine Arts in Great Britain and Ireland, 2 vols. (London, 1841), 2:245–50, quotation at 248.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ Sweet, Rosemary, Antiquaries: The Discovery of the Past in Eighteenth-Century Britain (London, 2004)Google Scholar; Cannon-Brookes, Peter, ed., The Painted Word: British History Painting, 1750–1830 (Woodbridge, Suffolk, and Rochester, NY, 1991)Google Scholar; Phillips, Mark S., Society and Sentiment: Genres of Historical Writing in Britain, 1740–1820 (Princeton, NJ, 2000)Google Scholar; Smiles, Samuel, The Image of Antiquity: Ancient Britain and the Romantic Imagination (New Haven, CT, and London, 1994)Google Scholar; Bentley, Michael, “The Evolution and Dissemination of Historical Knowledge,” in The Organisation of Knowledge in Victorian Britain, ed. Daunton, Martin J. (London, 2005), 173–98.Google Scholar For the impact of popular history on the construction of the Victorian vision of the national past in illustrations, fiction, and nonfiction, see Mitchell, Rosemary, Picturing the Past: English History in Text and Image, 1830–1870 (Oxford, 2000)Google Scholar.

⁶¹ The Knaptons had earlier commissioned a series of prints of national history from Francis Hayman and Nicholas Blakey, and a small number were produced; my thanks to Mark S. Phillips for this information. The Society of Artists awarded premiums for history paintings from the 1760s onward. For the royal collections, see Lloyd, “George III and His Painters,” 85–92; and Watkin, David, The Architect King: George III and the Culture of the Enlightenment (London, 2004), 125–34.Google Scholar

⁶² Bowyer's Historic Gallery was located at No. 68, Berner's Street, London; see The Times, 4 January 1792, 1. See also Calè, Luisa, Fuseli's Milton Gallery: “Turning Readers into Spectators” (Oxford, 2006), 34–42Google Scholar; Boase, T. S. R., “Macklin and Bowyer,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 26 (1963): 148–77Google Scholar; Hutton, Richard W., “Robert Bowyer and the Historic Gallery: A Study of the Creation of a Magnificent Work to Promote the Arts in England” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 1992).Google Scholar For Arthur Pond's illustration of Paul de Rapin's History of England, see Lippincott, Louise, Selling Art in Georgian London: The Rise of Arthur Pond (New Haven, CT, and London, 1983), 149–53.Google Scholar

⁶³ I am grateful for discussions with Mark S. Phillips on his new book, provisionally entitled “To Make the Distant Near”: Distance and Historical Representation (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, forthcoming). See also his Society and Sentiment.

⁶⁴ H. T. Dickinson, “Davison, Alexander (1750–1829),” in Matthew and Harrison, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/7298 (accessed 31 December 2009).

⁶⁵ [Prince Hoare], “No. XXI: Galleries of English Paintings” (1 August 1807), in Hoare, The Artist, 3–14, quotation at 5.

⁶⁶ Davison, Alexander, Descriptive Catalogue of the Series of Pictures formed on Subjects selected from the History of England, painted by British artists for Alexander Davison, Esquire, MDCCCVI. In the order in which they are arranged, at his house in St James’-Square, London (London, 1807)Google Scholar, n.p. (hereafter cited as Davison Catalogue). Davison had had an earlier catalogue printed privately; see Alexander Davison, A descriptive catalogue of paintings by British Artists, executed for Alexander Davison, Esq., of scenes selected from the history of England, as arranged in his house in St James's Square (1806).

⁶⁷ For the painting, and further references, see Neff, Emily Ballew, John Singleton Copley in England (London, 1996), 36–38.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ Davison Catalogue, 24.

⁶⁹ In 1807, Davison hosted the artists as guests of honor at a sumptuous dinner to celebrate the gallery's completion; see DJF, 8:2939, 2944, 2977, 3004.

⁷⁰ See Hume, David, History of England, 6 vols. (London, 1762), 1:53–69.Google Scholar Wilkie vaguely acknowledged Hume's History of England as the source of his subject. West and Copley referenced Hume too; Northcote listed Rapin and, like others, a range of antiquarian and specialist works. See also Davison Catalogue, 37, 5; and Strong, Roy, And When Did You Last See Your Father? The Victorian Painter and British History (London, 1978), 123.Google Scholar The Anglo-Saxon hero was a favorite of modern British royalty: Prince Frederick in 1740 commissioned Alfred: A Masque (London, 1740), with text by the Scottish poets James Thomson and David Mallett and Thomas Arne's musical setting of Thomson's poem Rule Britannia; Queen Victoria named her younger son after Alfred.

⁷¹ Hume, History of England, 2:61–62; Warren is not mentioned. Tresham included his own portrait within a group of spectators in the painting.

⁷² Four of these paintings centering on female royalty are Robert Smirke's Elizabeth, Queen Dowager of Edward the Fourth, in the Sanctuary at Westminster, receiving a Deputation from the Council of State, sent to demand her younger Son the Duke of York; James Northcote's Henry Percy, fifth Earl of Northumberland, presenting the Princess Margaret, eldest Daughter of Henry the Seventh, to James the Fourth, King of Scotland, at Lamerton; John Singleton Copley's Offer of the Crown to Lady Jane Grey, by the Dukes of Northumberland and Suffolk, and other Lords, Deputies of the Privy Council; and Richard Westall's Mary Queen of Scots, after her defeat at the Battle of Langside, finally quits her own Country, and embarks in a Fishing Boat for England, with a determination to seek protection of Queen Elizabeth.

⁷³ Davison Catalogue, 28–29, with reference to Hume, History of England, 5:276–77 (Eliz. AD 1586), as well as to Sir Fulke Greville, Life of Sir Philip Sidney [London, 1652], chap. 12, p. 42. See also Hume, History of England, 1:347–50; and von Erffa, Helmut and Staley, Allen, The Paintings of Benjamin West (New Haven, CT, and London, 1986), cat. no. 80Google Scholar (Sir Philip Sidney, mortally wounded, Woodmere Art Gallery, Philadelphia [West is the balding figure leaning on a horse in the right foreground of the painting]).

⁷⁴ Davison Catalogue, 32–33 (West, quoting from his 1799 Royal Academy Discourse); see also 39 (Northcote); cf. 41 (Devis), 43–44 (Tresham), 45 (Westall), and 47 (Copley).

⁷⁵ Macleod, Art and the Victorian Middle Class, 46–47.

⁷⁶ Annals of the Fine Arts 1 (1817): 242–54; Gentleman's Magazine 93 (1823): ii, 64–65.

⁷⁷ See Associated Artists in Colours, Water, Catalogue of the First Exhibition (London, 1808), 7Google Scholar; Review of Publications on Art 2 (June 1808): 173; and Pye, John, Patronage of British Art (London, 1845), 304–5.Google Scholar

⁷⁸ Kay Dian Kriz, “French Glitter or English Nature? Representing Englishness in Landscape Painting, c. 1790–1820,” in Hemingway and Vaughan, Art in Bourgeois Society, 63–83.

⁷⁹ DJF, 1:270.

⁸⁰ See Lyles, Anne, Turner and Natural History: The Farnley Project (London, 1988), 48, cat. 4.Google Scholar

⁸¹ Fawkes, Walter, A Collection of Water Colour Drawings (London, 1819), 7.Google Scholar

⁸² See Royal Academy Council Minutes, VI, 90, 1819, Royal Academy of Arts Archives, Burlington House, London.

⁸³ Fawkes, Collection of Water Colour Drawings, 7–11.

⁸⁴ Watkin, David and Hewat-Jaboor, Philip, eds., Thomas Hope: Regency Designer (New Haven, CT, and London, 2008)Google Scholar; Watkin, David, Thomas Hope, 1769–1831, and the Neo-Classical Idea (London, 1968)Google Scholar.

⁸⁵ Hope was also an early patron of the leading neoclassical sculptor, John Flaxman; encouraged the sentimental, picturesque, and moralizing genre painting and the anecdotal revival; and owned watercolors; see Watkin, Thomas Hope, 43–47, 102–4, 109–10, 122.

⁸⁶ DJF, 9:3214.

⁸⁷ Williams, D. E., The Life and Correspondence of Sir Thomas Lawrence, Kt., 2 vols. (London, 1831), 1:129, 353–56.Google Scholar See also Thomas Lawrence to Joseph Farington, 12 March 1805, LAW/1/126, and J. J. Angerstein to Sir Thomas Lawrence, 21 January 1819, LAW/3/6, Sir Thomas Lawrence Papers, Royal Academy of Arts Archives, Burlington House, London; and Egerton, Judy, National Gallery Catalogues: The British School (New Haven, CT, and London, 1998), 366.Google Scholar

⁸⁸ Young, John, A catalogue of the celebrated collection of pictures of the late Julius Angerstein (London, 1823)Google Scholar, n.p.; Egerton, The British School, 358. Angerstein's purchases are poorly documented: he bought Hogarth's Self-Portrait with Pug (from Christie’s, in 1792) and Marriage a-la-Mode (in 1797, for 1,000 guineas, from the heir of John Lane); no further Hogarths were acquired for the National Gallery in its first half century. Angerstein also purchased three Fuselis on subjects from Paradise Lost (in 1799), Reynolds's Lord Heathfield (purchased or mortgaged from Lawrence after 1809); and Wilkie's Village Merry-Making (which Angerstein commissioned in 1811).

⁸⁹ Sotheby, William, A Poetical Epistle to Sir George Beaumont, Bart. On the encouragement of the British School of Painting (London, 1801)Google Scholar; Owen, Felicity and Brown, David B., Collector of Genius: A Life of Sir George Beaumont (New Haven, CT, and London, 1988), 77, 81, 85.Google Scholar By contrast, Beaumont always stayed hostile to Turner, was inconsistent in his attitude toward Constable, and neglected watercolorists; see Owen and Brown, Collecter of Genius, 64–65, 67–68, 74–77, 87–91. For Beaumont's patronage, see also Conlin, The Nation's Mantelpiece, 44–45.

⁹⁰ [Coxe, Peter], Another Word or Two; or, Architectural Hints Continued in Lines to those Royal Academicians who Are Painters (London, 1807), 66–67.Google Scholar For the Stafford collection, the first aristocratic gallery in London to open, in 1806, to a select public, see DJF, 7:2787–88, 2796; 8:2805, 2843, 3043–44; 9:3280, 3298, 3305; 10:3664, 3697; 11:3936; and [Prince Hoare], “No. XXI: Galleries of English Paintings” (1 August 1807), in Hoare, The Artist, 3–14, esp. 8–9. The diarist Joseph Farington noticed a Turner juxtaposed with a Claude, a Vandevelde, and a Cuyp; see DJF, 5:1773–75, with his sketch of the gallery layout. See also Britton, John, Catalogue Raisonnée of the Pictures belonging to the … Marquis of Stafford, in the Gallery of Cleveland House (London, 1808)Google Scholar; and William Young Ottley [and Petro William Tomkins], Engravings of the … Marquis of Stafford's Collection of Pictures in London, 4 vols. (London, 1818), esp. vol. 1.

⁹¹ Young, John, preface to Catalogue of the Pictures at Grosvenor House (London, 1820)Google Scholar, n.p. Sir Joshua Reynolds had initially asked 1,000 guineas for Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse and had sold it in 1790 through Noel Joseph Desenfans to the vicomte de Calonne for £735. At open auction in 1795, it made only £336.10, but in 1823, Grosvenor bought it for £1,837.10. In 1921, his descendant sold it to Joseph Duveen, who charged Henry Huntington £73,500; see Reitlinger, Economics of Taste, 73. For the collection and its display, see Young, Catalogue of the Pictures at Grosvenor House; Jameson, Companion, 225–84, esp. 242; [Hazlitt, William], Sketches of the principal picture-galleries in England, with a criticism on “Marriage a-la-mode” (London, 1824), 107–9Google Scholar; Waagen, Works of Art, 2:301–18; and Passavant, Tour of a German Artist, 1:147–59.

⁹² Lloyd, “George III and His Painters,” 93–97.

⁹³ [Blore, Thomas], A Guide to Burleigh House, Northamptonshire, The Seat of the Marquis of Exeter; Containing A Catalogue of all the Paintings, Antiquities, &c. (Stamford, 1815), 51–54, 67–72, 153–66Google Scholar; Rowell, Christopher, Warrell, Ian and Brown, David Blayney, Turner at Petworth (London, 2002), 19Google Scholar; Butlin, Martin, Luther, Mollie, and Warrell, Ian, Turner at Petworth: Painter and Patron (London, 1989)Google Scholar; Jones, George, Sir Francis Chantrey: Recollections of his life, practice and opinions (London, 1849), 197Google Scholar; John Constable's Correspondence, ed. R. B. Beckett, 6 vols. (Ipswich, 1962–78), 4:105; The Diary of Benjamin Robert Haydon, ed. Pope, William Bissell, 5 vols. (Cambridge, MA, 1960–63), 3:167Google Scholar; Leslie, Charles R., Autobiographical Recollections, 2 vols. (London, 1860), 1:105Google Scholar; Dibdin, Thomas F., Aedes Althorpianae, 2 vols. (London, 1822), 1:268Google Scholar; A Description of the House and Gardens at Stourhead (Salisbury, 1800), 10–11, 19Google Scholar; Catalogue of the Hoare Library at Stourhead co. Wilts. To which are added an Account of the Museum of British Antiquities, a Catalogue of the Prints and Drawings, and a Description of the Mansion (London, 1840), 733–54Google Scholar, 749; Lyles, Turner and Natural History, 48, cat. 4; Clayden, P. W., Rogers and His Contemporaries, 2 vols. (London, 1889), 1:56–57Google Scholar; Waagen, Works of Art, 2:133–34, and Treasures of Art in Great Britain: Being an account of the Chief Collections of Paintings, Drawings, Sculptures, Illuminated Mss., &c, 3 vols. (London, 1854), 2:73–82Google Scholar; Macleod, Art and the Victorian Middle Class, 409, 468; Jameson, Companion, 384–85; Reitlinger, Economics of Taste, 77; Roberts, R. Ellis, Samuel Rogers and His Circle (London, 1910), 99Google Scholar; Gentleman's Magazine 80 (1810): i, 610; ii, 293.

⁹⁴ Langford, Paul, Public Life and the Propertied Englishman, 1689–1798 (Oxford, 1991)Google Scholar; Colley, Britons.

⁹⁵ Dorey, Helen, “Soane as a Collector,” in A Miscellany of Objects from Sir John Soane's Museum, by Thornton, Peter and Dorey, Helen (London, 1992), 122–26, esp. 126.Google Scholar The Rake's Progress series had been exhibited at the British Institution retrospective in 1814.

⁹⁶ For general reflections in addition to the literature on collecting referenced above, see Pomian, Krzysztof, Collectors and Curiosities: Paris and Venice, 1500–1800, trans. Wiles-Portier, Elizabeth (Cambridge, 1987)Google Scholar.

⁹⁷ Bailey, Colin B., Patriotic Taste: Collecting Modern Art in Pre-Revolutionary Paris (New Haven, CT, and London, 2002)Google Scholar.

⁹⁸ Macleod, Art and the Victorian Middle Class, 53.

⁹⁹ Quoted in Hamlyn, Robin, Robert Vernon's Gift (London, 1993), 18.Google Scholar