The history of collecting is a topic of central importance to many academic disciplines, and shows no sign of abating in popularity. As such, scholars will welcome this collection of essays by internationally recognised experts that gathers together for the first time varied and stimulating perspectives on the nineteenth-century collector and art market for French eighteenth-century art, and ultimately the formation of collections that form part of such august institutions as the Louvre and the National Gallery in London. The book is the culmination of a successful conference organised jointly between the Wallace Collection and the Louvre, on the occasion of the acclaimed exhibition Masterpieces from the Louvre: The Collection of Louis La Caze. Exploring themes relating to collectors, critics, markets and museums from France, England and Germany, the volume will appeal to academics and students alike, and become essential reading on any course that deals with the history of collecting, the history of taste and the nineteenth-century craze for the perceived douceur de vivre of eighteenth-century France. It also provides valuable insight into the history of the art markets and the formation of museums.

Following Caravaggio's death in 1610, the French artist Valentin de Boulogne (1591-1632) emerged as one of the great champions of naturalistic painting. The eminent art historian Roberto Longhi honored him as "the most energetic and passionate of Caravaggio's naturalist followers." In Rome, Valentin—who loved the tavern as much as the painter's pallette—fell in with a rowdy confederation of artists but eventually received commissions from some of the city's most prominent patrons. It was in this artistically rich but violent metropolis that Valentin created such masterworks as a major altarpiece in Saint Peter's Basilica and superb renderings of biblical and secular subjects—until his tragic death at the age of forty-one cut short his ascendant career. With discussions of nearly fifty works, representing practically all of his painted oeuvre, Valentin de Boulogne: Beyond Caravaggio explores both the the artist's superlative depictions of daily life and the tumultuous context in which they were produced. Essays by a team of international scholars consider his key attributions to European painting, his devotion to everyday objects and models from life, his technique of staging pictures with the immediacy of unfolding drama, and his place in the pantheon of French artists. An extensive chronology surveys the rare extant documents that chronicle his biography, while individual entries help situate his works in the contexts of his times. Rich with incident and insight, and beautifully illustrated in Valentin's complex, suggestive paintings, Valentin de Boulogne: Beyond Caravaggio reveals a seminal artist, a practitioner of realism in the seventeenth century who prefigured the naturalistic modernism of Gustave Courbet and Edouard Manet two centuries later.