British Models of Art Collecting and the American Response - Reflections Across the Pond presents 14 essays by distinguished art - and cultural - historians. Collectively, they examine points of similarity and difference in the approaches to art collecting practiced in Britain and the United States. Unlike most of their Continental European counterparts, the English and Americans have historically been exceptionally open to collecting the art made by and for other cultures. At the same time, they developed a tradition of opening private collections to a public eager for educational and cultural advancement. Approximately half the essays examine the trends and market forces that dominated the British art collecting scene of the nineteenth century, such as the Orleans sale and the shift away from aristocratic collections to those of the new urban merchant class. The essays that focus on American collectors use biographical sketches of collectors and dealers, as well as case studies of specific transactions to demonstrate how collectors in the United States embraced and embellished on the British model to develop their own, often philanthropic approach to art collecting.

Not unlike their European forebears, Americans have historically held Italian Renaissance paintings in the highest possible regard, never allowing works by or derived from Raphael, Leonardo, or Titian to fall from favor. The ten essays in A Market for Merchant Princes trace the progression of American collectors’ taste for Italian Renaissance masterpieces from the antebellum era, through the Gilded Age, to the later twentieth century. By focusing variously on issues of supply and demand, reliance on advisers, the role of travel, and the civic-mindedness of American collectors from the antebellum years through the post–World War II era, the authors bring alive the passions of individual collectors while chronicling the development of their increasingly sophisticated sensibilities. In almost every case, the collectors on whom these essays concentrate founded institutions that would make the art they had acquired accessible to the public, such as the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the Morgan Library and Museum, the Walters Art Gallery, The Frick Collection, and the John and Mable Ringling Museum. The contributors to the volume are Jaynie Anderson, Andrea Bayer, Edgar Peters Bowron, Virginia Brilliant, David Alan Brown, Clay M. Dean, Frederick Ilchman, Tiffany Johnston, Stanley Mazaroff, and Jennifer Tonkovich.

British Models of Art Collecting and the American Response - Reflections Across the Pond presents 14 essays by distinguished art - and cultural - historians. Collectively, they examine points of similarity and difference in the approaches to art collecting practiced in Britain and the United States. Unlike most of their Continental European counterparts, the English and Americans have historically been exceptionally open to collecting the art made by and for other cultures. At the same time, they developed a tradition of opening private collections to a public eager for educational and cultural advancement. Approximately half the essays examine the trends and market forces that dominated the British art collecting scene of the nineteenth century, such as the Orleans sale and the shift away from aristocratic collections to those of the new urban merchant class. The essays that focus on American collectors use biographical sketches of collectors and dealers, as well as case studies of specific transactions to demonstrate how collectors in the United States embraced and embellished on the British model to develop their own, often philanthropic approach to art collecting.