Abstract

This dissertation concerns British art collectors in Birmingham, Manchester, and London, and their collections of French art assembled in the second half of the nineteenth century. Most of these men were industrialists, earning their wealth through manufacturing or industrial production. They were new collectors, broadly unfamiliar with art and possessing little professional connoisseurship in it, but who nevertheless sought to educate themselves, purchase artworks, and form cohesive collections for both private and public view. The reasons these new collectors purchased artworks varied. Some purchased artworks speculatively, viewing them as objects of potential financial appreciation. Others bought art with an eye towards eventual philanthropic endeavors, to ultimately donate their collections to local or national arts institutions for public edification. Most of these men bought art because they found broad aesthetic worth in their purchases. The artists whose artworks they purchased differed from their immediate predecessors, who were aristocratic. This industrialist class sought out new pictures from contemporary British and Continental artists—including many of whom were French—to culturally differentiate themselves from their aristocratic predecessors. This dissertation investigates the important role of contemporary French pictures in the collections of nine nineteenth-century British industrialist collectors. It argues three main points. The first argument is that most of these collectors purchased French art for reasons of personal or public philanthropy, current or planned philanthropy, and persuasion. These categories will be briefly discussed. Most French pictures bought by the collectors in this study were rural genre scenes and landscapes. They depicted agricultural activities, forested landscapes, seascapes, and domestic cottage scenes of women and children, the majority sourced from, or inspired by, the French countryside. This dissertation argues that these assemblages of rural-themed pictures reflected these collectors’ beliefs that nature, idealized or otherwise, was valuable, and depictions of it could communicate that to British audiences. They found in their French pictures both nostalgia and contemporary instruction. The second argument is that the collectors in this study saw a clear throughline in their work as arts supporters to their other charitable works. While not all these collectors envisioned posthumous plans for their art collections, many of them did. During their lifetimes, almost all these collectors were generous lenders of their artworks. This reflected their serious beliefs that their art could serve to educate and ennoble the public, even after their deaths. The third argument and final argument concerns the place of these collectors within their social and professional networks. Corresponding to Pierre Bourdieu’s “field of cultural production” hermeneutic, I argue that many of these British collectors were influenced and encouraged to purchase French artworks by others, primarily individual art dealers and Anglophone art critics. Their eagerness to do so suggested an openness to French art and artists that has been previously neglected, and a belief by their purchasers in their artworks aesthetic value and cultural cachet.

Committee Chair

Elizabeth Childs

Committee Members

Ila Sheren; John Klein; Simon Kelly; William Wallace

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Author's Department

Art History & Archaeology

Author's School

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Document Type

Dissertation

Date of Award

4-24-2026

Language

English (en)

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