What is a Collector? From the Giants of Collecting to Small Amateurs: their Respective Contributions to Victorian Collections of Islamic Art

This article looks at the reception of Islamic--notably Persian--art in nineteenth-century Britain. While Orientalism is often studied through its ideological, literary or pictorial forms of expression, less attention has been granted to its presence in material culture. Recent developments in museography and historiography, however, have started investigating the first steps in the creation of vast national collections of Oriental art. This paper pursues the same interrogation, but focusing instead on private collections, which may tell us more about individual motivations and tastes, the logic of acquisition of the objects, and the small circles of amateurs in which artworks and ideas were exchanged. After presenting some of the methodological difficulties of such a study, the article offers a broad survey of the various "profiles" of collectors of Islamic art, from the best-known connoisseurs to smaller amateurs--who may have owned just a few objects, but whose "connected histories" help us recreate the complex artistic and social networks involved in the diffusion of Oriental taste. One particular event, the first exhibition of "Persian and Arab Art" held in London in 1885, illustrates the fertility of such an approach.