In 1806, the Marquess and Marchioness of Stafford opened a gallery at Cleveland House, London, to display their internationally-renowned collection of Old Master paintings to the public. A ticket to the gallery's Wednesday afternoon openings was a sought-after prize, granting access to the collection and the house's dazzling interior in the company of artists, celebrities, and Britain's elite. This book explores the gallery's interior through the lens of its abundant material culture, including paintings in gilded frames, furniture, silver oil lamps, flower arrangements, and the numerous printed catalogues and guidebooks that made the gallery visible to those who might never cross its threshold. Through detailed analysis of these objects and a wide range of other visual, material, textual and archival sources, the book presents the gallery at Cleveland House as a methodological case study on how the display of art in the 19th century was shaped by notions about public and private space, domesticity, and the role art galleries played in the formation of national culture. In doing so, the book also explains how and why magnificent private galleries and the artworks and objects they contained gripped the public imagination during a critical period of political and cultural transformation during and after the Napoleonic Wars. Combining historical, cultural and material analysis, the book will make essential reading for researchers in British art in the Regency period, museum studies, collecting studies, social history, and the histories of interior decoration and design in the 18th and 19th centuries.

This catalogue offers a detailed account of the artwork in the gallery of Cleveland House, featuring insights into the history and merit of each piece. It is a valuable resource for art enthusiasts and historians alike. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

This volume explores twelve house museums, created over more than two centuries, and founded across the globe. What motivates collectors to establish independent house museums instead of donating their collections to preexisting institutions? How have collectors’ original intentions manifested themselves in their museums? Have founder mandates aided the survival or caused the demise of their institutions? How have house museums’ collections or buildings evolved over time? Must museums reinterpret their collections to remain relevant to contemporary and diverse audiences? In seeking to answer these questions, the volume’s authors share the unique stories behind the creation and evolution of these fascinating institutions, and the intriguing stories of the exceptional individuals who founded them. Contributors: Aistė Bimbirytė, Eliza Butler, Chih-En Chen, Enrico Colle, Allegra Davis, Marissa Hershon, Mia Laufer, Ulrike Müller, Nadine Nour el Din, Inge Reist, Anne Nellis Richter, and Georgina S. Walker.

For every great country house of the Georgian period, there was usually also a town house. Chatsworth, for example, the home of the Devonshires, has officially been recognised as one of the country's favourite national treasures - but most of its visitors know little of Devonshire House, which the family once owned in the capital. In part, this is because town houses were often leased, rather than being passed down through generations as country estates were. But, most crucially, many London town houses, including Devonshire House, no longer exist, having been demolished in the early twentieth century. This book seeks to place centre-stage the hugely important yet hitherto overlooked town houses of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, exploring the prime position they once occupied in the lives of families and the nation as a whole. It explores the owners, how they furnished and used these properties, and how their houses were judged by the various types of visitor who gained access.

Excerpt from Catalogue Raisonné of the Pictures Belonging to the Marquis of Stafford, in the Gallery of Cleveland House: Comprising a List of the Pictures, With Illustrative Anecdotes, and Descriptive Accounts of the Execution, Composition, and Characteristic Merits of the Principal Paintings The present little Volume would have made its' appearance some months earlier, but for a lohg series of illness, which has incapacitated me from performing my duty to the Public, or obtaining the pleasure and advantage which generally result from literary applications. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.