Private collection

“ Of some of these the interest cannot be reproduced in its entirety by any mere reprint, and it is this salvage which forms the literary museum. Book-collectors are privileged to leap at once to this stage in their relations with books, using the dealers’ shops and catalogues as depositories from which to pick the books which will best fit with the aim or central idea of their collection. For in the modern private collection, as in the modern museum, the need for a central idea must be fully recognized. Neither the collector nor the curator can be content to keep a mere curiosity-shop. ”

“ If, for instance, there is already in existence in the city some collection which with proper tact may eventually come to the museum, it is the duty of the committee to plan the collection which they are to buy in such a way that it will not cover the same field. But the existence of private or other collections is not the only thing to be considered. There are two ends in view in adding the museum to the educational equipment of a city. One is the development of a high class of artisans producing a more artistic grade of manufactures. ”

“ The prime object of the Society is the collection and preservation of the materials of history; the more numerous the multiplication of copies, the more certain the probabilities of their preservation. A private collector may for obvious reasons hoard his treasures, and wish for the destruction of all copies of them ”

“ The supply is assisted by the efforts of many forgers of false pieces, the most cunning of whom bring all archaeological skill to their aid, and few great Collections.national or private collections are free from some example of this industry. For the genuine pieces competition runs high. Suits of plate of the earliest period may be sought in vain, and the greatest collectors may hardly hope for such a panoply of the late Gothic period as that which is the ornament of the Wallace collection. Even this famous harness is not wholly free from suspicion of restoration. ”

“ Perhaps its very scarcity, its gradual absorption during more than one generation, into such great private collections as are not likely to be dispersed, and, yet more, into national, or university, or municipal collections, into which everything entering takes at once, and with no period of novitiate, the black veil—perhaps this very scarcity is accountable for the lack of vivid interest in such work on the part of the collector of modern mind. ”

“ And the case even of private libraries is becoming, nay, has become, very serious for all who are possessed by the inexorable spirit of collection, but whose ardor is perplexed and qualified, or even baffled, by considerations springing from the balance-sheet. ”

“ It is obviously an uneconomy for special collections to be locked up for the greater part of the week in the private rooms of institutions and societies when they may be made available all day and every day to the members of these societies and to the general public in the municipal reference library. These bodies may often be induced to deposit their collection if some simple arrangement is made by which books may be lent as required to their members and may be available to everybody for reference purpose when not so lent out. ”

“ We give our reader credit for good taste and common sense, and doubt not he will think it sufficient that a national gallery should consist of good pictures—the best that are to be had. But no: common sense is too unrefined for this knowledge-age, and good taste is of private purveyorship, and of very little importance in forming a public collection. ”

“ In the last century many private persons—many noblemen of wealth and culture—possessed remarkable collections of antiquities. These have mostly been swallowed up by what is called “the nation,” and new private collections are very rare indeed. ”

“ Such men will only give satisfaction in great private libraries little disturbed by their proprietors, or in monastic or other corporate institutions, where it is [229] the worthy object of the patrons to keep their collection in fine condition, and, at the same time, to take order that it shall be of the least possible service to education or literature. ”

“ Those who in the years to come will inherit the numberless useless private collections now being formed will make haste to rid themselves of such unhappy legacies, by thrusting them upon local museums, or by destroying them outright in their [Pg_239] anxiety to have it forgotten that one of their name had a part in the detestable business of depriving the land of these wonderful and beautiful forms of life—a life which future generations would have cherished as a dear and sacred possession. ”

“ The "Free Art League of America" has recently printed an open letter, in which it congratulates the American people on the triumph of free art and rejoices over the certitude that valuable collections of old masterpieces will soon be brought to this country, and that beautiful carvings, bronzes, ivories, and antiques of all descriptions will drift into our museums, and into private collections all over the country. ”

“ Even antique works of art in private collections are considered as national property in a sense and their owner can be punished for injuring them; if the owner of an ancient building attempts to demolish it or refuses to keep it in repair, the State may expropriate him. ¶ Holland, Prussia, Saxony, Spain, Sweden and Norway, Switzerland, and many American States have provisions of a more or less stringent character with the same purpose. ”

“ A fair proportion of the population now having secured competency, that condition once assured, with increased opportunities for intellectual culture and the enjoyment of art, the development of refined tastes and pursuits in America has been marked by the formation of many private collections. ”

“ Thousands of precious volumes, which might be mine, if I had been otherwise situated, are merely as a question of form and pecuniary arrangement in the British Museum, in the Bodleian, or in some private library; they are one and all before me at any moment, when I choose to summon them. I remember how they are bound, and the story which each tells; but they are in the keeping of others. ”

“ I love auction rooms without catalogues, without plush chairs, where specialists have not been allowed to separate the goats from the sheep.
“Finds” are rare in our times when every grocer’s wife who inherited a library from her great uncle, the preacher, knows more about auction-room prices than the average collector of books; when every push-cart peddlar examines his ill-smelling day’s collection for antiques.
Books and works of art have become objects of speculation. ”

“ These private collections, as a matter of course, are of many different kinds. One may often search them in vain for the great, recognized masterpieces, while one may find a little, unconsidered picture in the place of honor; and in order to understand the odd arrangement of many of these small collections, one must take as one’s cicerone the person whose choice they represent. Here, now, is a picture from a private gallery.—
There hung in a corner of the Salon of 1878 a picture by the English painter Mr. ”

“ The collections which compose it extend over a wider range than that covered by any other public establishment having a like purpose. And, if we take them as a whole, those collections are also far more conspicuously indebted to the liberality of individual benefactors. |The Public debt to private Collectors.| In a degree of which there is elsewhere no example, the British Museum has been gradually built up by the munificence of open-handed Collectors, rather than by the public means of the Nation, as administered by Parliament, or by the Governments of the day. ”

“ Another collector with whom I am personally acquainted has read this chapter through at my express request, and consequently cannot reasonably say that I have endeavoured to question the soundness of his discretion behind his back. He accumulates books with a history. If a book has no history, he will have none of it. In his library are many volumes which I must confess I have a great regard for, but which I know can never be mine, for each is unique, and the whole collection is destined for a public museum in the end. ”

“ Most museums which have come into existence within the last 200 years suffer from the fact that they are mere enlargements of the ancient collector's "cabinet of rare and curious things," brought together and arranged without rhyme or reason. No one has ever attempted to say what is precisely the aim and intention as a public enterprise of any of our great museums, and accordingly there has been no consideration, discussion, or agreement as to the methods of collection, selection, arrangement, exhibition, and storage of the objects assembled within their walls. ”

“ While it is traditional to add a reminder that various unnamed people contributed to a publication, it is imperative to state here that numerous people are essential to the collection, conservation, preservation, and exhibition of museum objects. Without them no collection would survive and be made available to those who come to study, admire or just enjoy these objects. ”

“ The man, who possesses a miniature cabinet with a few hundred samples is apt to wax tired of surveying his property, even if they are all favourites with little histories of their own; and his friends share his tendency to indifference and defection. On the contrary, when the collection is very extensive and constantly growing, the personal attachment is transferred to the newest comers. It is like the mother with her last child; and the owner of a really large assemblage of coins resembles that of a great estate, who does not see portions of it from year’s end to year’s end. ”

“ This practice gives the collector a great insight into the progress of art, and the development of taste, yet it demands both time and patience to carry it out. Finally, it is true, the collector will have formed a continuous series of heraldic devices illustrating family history more completely than can be arrived at in any other manner. It is only by this constant study and comparison that the student of French ex-libris can hope to acquire a knowledge of their details, so as to be able to arrange his collection with a due attention to time, place, and families. ”

“ Residents in the provinces, equally with residents in the metropolis, contribute to the support of institutions like the British Museum, and are entitled to expect that they should, as far as possible, participate in its advantages. There are, I believe, many well-meaning people so impressed with the justice of this demand that to give it satisfaction they are prepared to permanently dislocate the national collection, or to despatch portion after portion on an itinerating tour throughout the provinces. ”

“ The wholesale exhibition of one class of objects leads to two things: a false impression on the part of the public as to the importance of that particular thing in the daily life of the people of ancient times, and a fatigue of mind and eye which must be avoided if the public is to benefit from the collection. To the great mass of museum visitors the exact position of a handle on a cup or the precise number of geometrical figures used in a design are of no possible interest. ”

“ The modern museum, on the other hand, should be organized for the public good, and should be, a fruitful source of amusement and instruction to the whole community. Even when Dr Waagen described the collections of England, about 1840, private individuals figured chiefly among the owners of art treasures. ”

“ He considers it as a museum, having evidently in view a collection of curiosities, the thing above all others a National Gallery should not be. “Then, again, as every collection has in view some definite purpose, the systematic fulfilment of that purpose on the most enlarged basis—in other words, systematic arrangement, and a wholeness or completeness in relation to its particular purpose, seem necessary to the idea of a national collection.” Words, words, words! all to envelop a commonplace truth that no one need be told. ”

“ It is a pity that the various museums of Europe do not print catalogues, not of their own collections only, but also of the duplicates which they can part with, so that they may be circulated, not only among the national collections, but also among private cabinets ”

“ There is a set of collectors, alas! whose inclinations are not virtuous. The most famous of them, a Frenchman, observed that his own collection of bad books was unique. That of an English rival, he admitted, was respectable,—“mais milord se livre à des autres préoccupations!” He thought a collector’s whole heart should be with his treasures. ”

“ Some one has well said that the buying of modern pictures for exhibition in a museum is gambling with public funds. It is a hazard which the museum director need not take, as a collection of paintings can be rapidly built up by gift and bequest, and the wise director will therefore spend his available funds on old and well-tried masters. But if the museum director is going to collect modern pictures, why should he not with equal right collect modern furniture of artistic design or modern glass or modern porcelain or any other thing of modern manufacture which has artistic merit? ”

“ In making purchases, such an object, steadily kept in view, exercises a powerful influence against the seductive attractions of 'great bargains,' which often turn out to be great misfortunes to a museum. Moreover, in accepting donations, it is sometimes convenient to be able to refer to a fixed plan. Where room is scanty, as in most museums, nothing is more subversive of order, or more fatal to an instructive arrangement, than the gift of a collection, coupled with a stipulation that it must be displayed in some special way. ”