Private Collectors in Brussels, Antwerp, and Ghent, Ca. 1780 1914

In the first half of the nineteenth century, Belgium was repeatedly praised as a country of collectors and amateurs, and private art and antique collectors were important and highly visible actors in urban cultural life. At a time when the public museum was still a relatively recent innovation, private collections were quite easily accessible for local and international visitors of the same social rank as the collectors. By the beginning of the twentieth century, however, the collector?s position in the public sphere had changed dramatically. Private collections were less accessible to an ever-expanding and increasingly culture-consuming public, and functioned more strongly in the context of the personal and explicitly private aims and networks of their owners. This book uncovers the premises and reasons for private collectors? shifting public role and relevance in nineteenth-century Brussels, Antwerp and Ghent. It examines the specific social, cultural, political, artistic and material context of private collectors? activity. Its main focus is on three related issues: 1) collectors? social profiles and networks; 2) collectors? tastes; and 3) the function, accessibility, display and reception of the collections. Attention is also paid to the differences between Brussels, Antwerp and Ghent with regard to the urban collecting cultures. The book intends to further our understanding of the diverse ways in which private collectors interacted with the social, cultural and artistic life of their cities and what the collectors? changing relationship to the public sphere can tell us about broader shifts in nineteenth-century culture, art and society.TABLE OF CONTENTSPrivate collectors and the public sphere: An introduction1. The collector as a research subject2. Towards a collective biography3. Of amateurs, connoisseurs and collectionneurs4. Sources, methods and the urban dimension5. Looking ahead1. An elite cultural practice in an age of transition1.1. Preserving national heritage at the dawn of the nineteenth century1.2. Belgian amateurs through the eyes of international travellers, ca. 1780-18601.3. Transformation of the collector scene, ca. 1860-19141.4. Personal profiles, artistic taste and local identities1.5. Gender norms and the exclusivity of private collections2. Enlightenment and the persistence of noble collecting, ca. 1780-18602.1. Arenberg. A rich tradition of collecting2.2. The picture gallery and the art historical canon2.3. Patronage and politics2.4. Contemporary art and (semi-)private spaces2.5. The adaptation and (dis)continuation of an influential model3. Local historiography and Romantic imagination, ca. 1815-18803.1. Ghent as a city of antiquarian collecting3.2. Heritage and experience in the Musée Minard-Van Hoorebeke3.3. The collector?s cabinet as a place of artistic inspiration3.4. Family bonds, gender and the maintenance of a legacy3.5. The end of Romantic collecting4. The rise of Belgian art and its patrons, ca. 1830-18604.1. Cultural politics and the public life of private collections4.2. Théodore de Coninck and the encouragement of the Belgian school in Ghent4.3. The lithograph album: Dissemination and self-presentation4.4. Common goals, distinct tastes ?4.5. ? and personal agendas5. The amateur in an expanding art world, ca. 1850-19005.1. Inventing the golden age of private collections: Politics and nostalgia5.2. The Huybrechts family and the status of contemporary art in Antwerp5.3. Elite sociability and the collector?s private realm5.4. Forging a new position in the public sphere5.5. The public-private divide6. The cultural significance of the aesthete, ca. 1880-19146.1. Personal taste and national representativeness6.2. Charles-Léon Cardon and his multiple roles in the art world6.3. The lure of the Early Flemish Masters6.4. The private interior as a work of (national) art6.5. A model of taste6.6. Private collections and public impact7. The emancipation of female taste, ca. 1890-19147.1. The disinterested maecenas and the collection as an alternative social space7.2. Emma Lambotte and the avant-garde in Antwerp7.3. The home as a means of self-expression and distinction7.4. Women and the canon of modern Belgian art