The Purchase of the Past
Collecting Culture in Post-Revolutionary Paris c.1790–1890

Offers a broad and vivid overview of the culture of collecting in France over the long nineteenth-century.

Tom Stammers (Author)

9781108478847, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 25 June 2020

370 pages, 30 b/w illus.
24 x 14.2 x 2.5 cm, 0.81 kg

'This book, by one of its most dynamic champions, is an indispensable and highly readable volume for anyone interested in French nineteenth-century history and collecting.' Kate Heard, Journal of the History of Collections

Offering a broad and vivid survey of the culture of collecting from the French Revolution to the Belle Époque, The Purchase of the Past explores how material things became a central means of accessing and imagining the past in nineteenth-century France. By subverting the monarchical establishment, the French Revolution not only heralded the dawn of the museum age, it also threw an unprecedented quantity of artworks into commercial circulation, allowing private individuals to pose as custodians and saviours of the endangered cultural inheritance. Through their common itineraries, erudition and sociability, an early generation of scavengers established their own form of 'private patrimony', independent from state control. Over a century of Parisian history, Tom Stammers explores collectors' investments – not just financial but also emotional and imaginative – in historical artefacts, as well as their uncomfortable relationship with public institutions. In so doing, he argues that private collections were a critical site for salvaging and interpreting the past in a post-revolutionary society, accelerating but also complicating the development of a shared national heritage.

Introduction. Collection, recollection, revolution
1. Amateurs and the art market in transition (c.1780–1830)
2. Archiving and envisioning the French Revolution (c.1780–1830)
3. Book-hunting, bibliophilia and a textual restoration (c.1790–1840)
4. Salvaging the gothic in private and public spaces (c.1820–70)
5. Royalists versus vandals, and the cult of the old regime (c.1860–1880)
6. Allies of the Republic? Inside the sale of the century (c.1870–1895)
Conclusion. The resilience and eclipse of curiosité.

Subject Areas: Material culture [JFCD], Social & cultural history [HBTB], European history [HBJD], Renaissance art [ACND]