Lord Lindsay As a Collector1
LORD LINDSAY AS A COLLECTOR1 by HUGH BRIGSTOCKE, MA, PhD. ASSISTANT KEEPER, THE NATIONAL GALLERY OF SCOTLAND e have seen how a proper appreciation of Lord Lindsay's wSketches of the History of Christian Art depends on an understanding of the extent to which he regarded this study as an illustration of his all-embracing determinist philosophy of history. His attitude to collecting from the 1840s until the mid-1870s must also be considered in a much wider context. His ambition was to form a private museum and library which would represent all branches of science, literature, and art, and all stages in the development of human intellectual progress. As he himself was to record nostalgically in 1865: '1 had, in fact, in my earliest youth determined to assemble together the wisest and most graceful thinkers of all countries, ages, and pursuits, as agreeable companions, instructive teachers, and honoured guests, under the symbolical pavilion of the Lindsays, who, with their friends, might thus converse hereafter, as in the School of Athens, with congenial associates in whatever branches of literature, art, or science, their genius or taste should severally direct them to. .. 2 We should not, therefore, expect to find Lindsay's picture collec- tion limited to the works of the fourteenth-century masters about whom he had written so eloquently in 1847. Yet it still comes as a considerable surprise to discover that between the late 1850s and the early 1870s he extended his range sufficiently to acquire works attributed to Bolognese seicento artists including Annibale Carracci, Guercino, and Guido Reni, and even a Dutch animal painting attributed to Paul Potter as well.
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