The Age of the Individual Bought with Love: The Secret History of British Art Collections

Imagine a world that is very different from today.

A world where there are no public galleries

full of colourful paintings.

Where the Old Masters like Leonardo da Vinci

and Michelangelo are hardly known.

Where art is considered purely decorative,

and the artist a mere craftsman.

It's astonishing, yet this was Britain 400 years ago.

Since then, great works of art have flooded onto British shores

and our appreciation of art and artists has been transformed.

This is the story of the private collectors

who brought a wealth of treasures from overseas,

whose patronage encouraged British-born artists,

and whose personal passion for art and individual taste

helped create this cultural revolution

and shaped the artistic direction of our nation.

In this programme, I'm going to look at how the role of collectors

changed radically throughout the 19th century,

kick-started by events that happened not in England

but across the Channel in revolutionary France.

Revolution and war always unlocks collections.

The market becomes very fluid.

How Britain's first canal-builder the Duke of Bridgewater,

turned from inland navigation to speculation in the art market,

landing one of the greatest hauls of paintings ever on British shores.

How, as Britain embraced democracy, collectors began to donate art

on an unprecedented scale to build our national collection.

They are hoping like crazy that all these patriotic fellow-countrymen

will bequeath or give paintings, and that's exactly what happened.

And how we moved into an era of eclecticism and variety

as newly-moneyed industrialists and bankers expressed their powerful

personalities and individuality in their bold purchases.

With pharmaceuticals magnate Thomas Holloway backing

what he considered the best of British,

while two Welsh heiresses brought Impressionism to Britain.

As collectors at the time they were revolutionary.

And extraordinary that it was two women who did this.

GUNFIRE/PEOPLE SHOUTING

1789 - the French Revolution was in full swing.

Aristocratic lives were in peril,

so too were their magnificent art collections.

Including that of the Duke of Orleans.

His art collection was virtually unrivalled in the whole of Europe

and had been the envy of connoisseurs around the world.

It boasted Raphaels...

..Tintorettos...

..Titians...

..paintings by all the great Old Masters.

These tumultuous times would cost the Duke his head...

..and the collection its home.

Old Masters like these had been the most coveted prizes

sought after by the English collectors for the past 200 years.

Now, this amazing cachet of paintings

would go to the highest bidder,

and a group of British aristocrats conceived an ingenious plan

of forming a syndicate to be sure of outbidding their rivals.

These canny Lords were the Duke of Bridgewater,

the Earl Gower and the Earl of Carlisle.

For the three men, the sale of the Orleans collection

was a chance to purchase the greatest single group

of masterpieces to come on the market for 200 years.

With much of the rest of Europe in tatters after years of war

and revolution, Britain was by contrast well-placed

to become the home for this collection.

The British were rich,

and British aristocrats had a huge appetite for art.

This is Castle Howard in Yorkshire

and was home to the fifth Earl of Carlisle,

one of the partners in the syndicate.

Carlisle and Gower were both already enthusiastic collectors.

Carlisle had been on a grand tour.

He took his dog with him

and came back with a fine collection of Italian art.

Gower had served as ambassador in Paris

and so would have been well aware of the Orleans collection.

Bridgewater's enormous wealth came from his development

of a canal system, and he was by all accounts less erudite.

On his grand tour, it was said he was more interested

in the Languedoc Canal in France than in the art on display.

Nevertheless, he could spot the opportunity to turn a profit,

whether in industry or paint.

Archivist Chris Ridgeway has some documents that tell

the tantalising story of the Orleans sale.

It's called the Bridgewater syndicate because it's named after

the principle stakeholder who was the Duke of Bridgewater.

I mean the very rich canal-builder,

famous from the second half of the 18th century.

But the Duke of Bridgewater is only one of the three men,

so Francis Duke of Bridgewater, Frederick Earl of Carlisle

here of Castle Howard

and Bridgewater's nephew George Earl Gower.

Those are the three men who formed the syndicate.

And this document here is their agreement, is it?

It's a hand-written memorandum of agreement

outlining all, as it were, the participants,

crucially the stakes that they put in,

the sum, so Bridgewater puts in £27,000,

Carlisle puts in £10,000

and Gower puts in £5,000.

And there's a bit of preamble and then crucially,

you've got the signatures and their seals.

So this is a legal document as well as a memorandum of understanding.

And this is a really new step, isn't it, in our collecting,

because this sort of thing hadn't really happened in Britain before?

Doesn't seemed to have happened in Britain before in relation to art.

As I say, in the commercial world this is probably, you know,

going on everyday of the week,

but this seems to be one of the earliest instances

where they are doing it with a bulk of paintings rather than,

say, commodities or tea or something like that.

What they did with the paintings was quite novel, wasn't it?

They actually exhibited some of them, didn't they?

Well, that's the key to them being able to sell them

and get their money back.

So they had to go on sale in London.

This is the schedule of all the paintings.

-Tintoretto continued.

-Yeah.

Titian, all these Titians.

-My goodness.

-Veronese here.

Velazquez here. I mean, this is a role call of European art,

I mean, the great masterpieces of Europe.

And here they all are in London en masse

available for people to see

and even better, available for people to buy.

When the syndicate put the collection on exhibition,

it was so vast that it needed to be housed in two venues.

The show lasted for seven months, causing huge public excitement.

But for the syndicate,

the point of putting these great Old Masters on show

was not to open up art to the public, but to sell it.

The three men reserved the paintings they wanted to keep

and through the sale of the rest of them pulled off an amazing coup -

they acquired their own pictures at virtually no cost to themselves.

Speculating on art had clearly worked.

And today, Castle Howard is still home to some of the works

that the ingenious and entrepreneurial Carlisle

acquired from the sale.

The Earl's descendent Simon Howard retains a delight in the art

his ancestor bought. Not least this exquisite work by Titian.

Gosh, that's beautiful.

It's called Gaston de Foix and it's rather beautiful, you know,

with the page boy dressing the warrior.

The green velvet is fantastically painted.

This must be one of the favourites in the collection.

It is. It's got a charm about it that I think is wonderful.

When you look at the working of the green velvet in the page boy

and the reflection in the armour and the look on both faces.

They're lovely expressions.

I just love it and it's one I've known all my life

and always been interested in

because of the whole debate about who it's by.

Currently it's attributed to the young Titian.

Yes, it is.

And so it would have been the fifth Earl of Carlisle who bought this.

-Indeed.

-And he clearly would've been attracted to it,

as he was to many of the Old Master paintings in that sale.

He was, and he was a great collector and he had a great eye and erm,

what he brought into this house

really was probably some of the most important paintings in the house

-that we have.

-So that particular collection, the Orleans sale,

did that really change the collection here?

-Well, put it this way, they named a room after him.

-Oh, well, yes...

They hung most of them in one room and called it the Orleans room.

Today, only the Earl's portrait remains in this room,

and now most of the paintings from the Orleans sale

are in the music room.

The Titian isn't the only work where the attribution has changed

over the years.

Today, this painting is thought to be by the Italian painter Bedoli,

but this was not always the case.

At the time of the Orleans sale, this painting was catalogued

as the Duke's Ferrara by Tinteretto,

and one of the really fascinating things about it

is its prodigal journey here.

The Dukes of Ferrara were one of the great collecting dynasties

of 16th century Italy

at a time when Italy was at the epicentre of art and collecting.

By the 18th century, it had arrived in France

and become part of the Orleans collection,

and by the beginning of the 19th century it was here at Castle Howard

as the British moved to the forefront of art collecting.

In many ways, the Orleans sale marked the pinnacle

of the British aristocrat collector.

Up to this point, the landed gentry had been the ones with the money

and appetite to buy such a wonderful collection.

But within the triumph of this sale there were clues

as to how collecting would change

as Britain became a more democratic nation.

For the last few decades, there had been a growing fashion

for the middle classes to visit great country houses

to view their art in situ.

But rather than the people having to seek out the collection,

the Orleans show brought the collection to the people.

In doing so, it whetted the appetite for art

amongst the wider population.

Now, a new kind of collector came through the doors -

men made rich by industry and banking.

These "newly moneyed" collectors saw the value of art

and its power to endorse their cultural credentials.

One of the chief buyers at the Orleans sale

was a John Julius Angerstein, a Russian emigre

who made his fortune as a merchant and Lloyd's underwriter.

And it would be Angerstein's collection,

rather than that of a British aristocrat,

that would make an historic contribution to the story of art

in Britain - because it was his collection that would form the basis

of our National Gallery in 1824.

The idea of a National Gallery had been in the air for a few decades.

In an age that was beginning to embrace democracy,

calling for the rights of all men and women,

there was a growing opinion that perhaps art should be available

to more than just a handful of rich collectors.

The idea had been discussed in parliament but had come to nothing.

Then Angerstein's death in 1823 forced the issue.

This journey from private drawing rooms to public display

is charted in the archives of the National Gallery.

And Susanna Avery-Quash is the curator of private collections.

The Angerstein Collection consisting of 38 pictures

was purchased for £57,000.

Various noblemen and aristocrats were worried

that when Angerstein died his collection would be sold abroad

as other collections had been in the past,

so they pushed and they shoved and they made a loud noise,

and the government, who had luckily been given some money

from a war loan from Austria, used the money to buy the collection.

-So that is the start.

-That's the start of the National Gallery.

And from then, obviously, it leads to certain requests.

Yes. And gifts and certain purchases, but also they're hoping,

because they don't really have an annual purchase grant early on,

nothing's very systematic,

so they're hoping like crazy that all these patriotic fellow

countrymen will bequeath or give paintings,

and that's exactly what happened.

What's fascinating to me is that the mood was really changing

-amongst these private collectors, wasn't it...

-Yes.

..at the beginning of the 19th century?

They were determined to share things.

They were, and almost a snowball-effect.

Somebody did something by gift or bequest

and then a whole stream of other people followed in succession.

That's really exciting to see number one, National Gallery Number one.

Exactly, and what it tells us also is that

it's a painting by Sebastiano del Piombo

of The Raising Of Lazarus.

Here it is, National Gallery number one -

The Raising of Lazarus by Sebastiano del Piombo.

It came to England via the Orleans sale

and in a way was the very first painting to be saved for the nation.

The National Gallery itself and many of its finest treasures

are here thanks to private collectors both past and present.

But the fact that these individuals felt motivated to share

their collections with the public

signalled a new attitude towards art.

This new sense of philanthropy dominated the attitude

of collectors as the century progressed.

In what became a huge democratisation of art,

treasures like this moved out of private hands

and into the public ownership.

And bequests came from many sources.

For example, that of the Reverend Holwell Carr

who bequeathed 35 paintings

including Titian's Holy Family With A Shepherd

and Tintoretto's Saint George And The Dragon.

So now the Great British public owned world-class paintings

alongside the rich and the aristocrats,

but were they ready for such artworks?

The archives also give an insight as to how some of the public responded

to this new national institution.

It's quite clear that the general public at the time

didn't really have an understanding of an art gallery

almost being like a sacred temple to the muses,

and they should show respect and keep quiet and so on.

In fact, in one of the select committee reports,

the keeper of the day noted that when he challenged

some country bumpkins about why they're opening up a picnic

in the middle of one of the rooms, they offered him a glass of gin.

What a lovely scene.

Yes, and he also commented that sometimes

when he went round the galleries at the end of the day

he would have to clear up little puddles

because of the schoolboys. There were no facilities

for relieving themselves, and so they would just do so

in the corners of the art gallery.

There was a still a long way to go before the National Gallery

became the experience it is today,

but this changing attitude to art reflects the seismic social

and political changes of the 19th century.

In 1832, the great Reform Act was passed.

It extended the franchise and changed constituency boundaries

to reflect the growth of new towns and industrial centres.

But most significantly, it began to question the assumption

that the old aristocracy were born with the right to rule.

If more of the population had a stake in running their country,

then everyone from mill workers and factory workers upwards

had a right and need for education.

And art appreciation was seen as a crucial part of a good education.

Industrial cities were springing up all over the place

and were seen as the symbol of the new age.

Progress was becoming a catch word for Victorian Britain

and nowhere represented progress more than Manchester.

In the late 18th century, it had had a population of just 30,000,

by the mid-19th century it had ballooned

to over ten times that figure.

Manchester's business grandees quickly matched words with wallets

and established a massive £74,000 fund

to host what is arguably the largest art exhibition

ever to have been held in the world.

The extraordinary thing about the Manchester show

was that it was made up almost entirely of loans

from private collections.

Collections that had been built up for the past 200 years

by generations of families and displayed in treasure houses

that dotted the country.

There were 984 lenders to the show

and emerging from their houses were priceless masterpieces

that were being shown together and in public for the first time.

Queen Victoria led the way, loaning 94 works

including two Rembrandts and a Van Dyck.

A Madonna, lent from a private collection,

was reattributed as a Michelangelo during the show,

becoming known as the Manchester Madonna.

And Castle Howard lent generously,

including Carracci's Dead Christ Mourned.

It was believed that such a show would have been impossible

in any other country in the world.

One critic even said it equalled the Louvre.

The show attracted more than 1.3 million visitors

from around the world,

and although there's nothing left of the buildings that housed it,

the Manchester art gallery has some wonderful records

of this extraordinary art event which archivist Ruth Shrigley

has researched in detail.

It was clearly a huge success and it did something

that had never really been done before

which was bring the public in to see art.

In vast numbers.

And it was, at the time, referred to as "The Greatest Show On Earth."

-It's as basic as that.

-Yes.

It feels very Victorian to record it all in this scientific way.

It possibly reflects the fact that Manchester businessmen

and bankers were used to using figures in order to make decisions

and to argue for policies,

particularly in relation to social reform.

That's very interesting, and this is a new thing for art, really,

to organise an exhibition according to these kind of factors.

Well, certainly to record those factors

and to be so keen on looking at what influences people to attend,

and they could see, by measuring the attendance,

the type of ticket-holder

who was coming, that they weren't actually getting as many people

from the working classes who they thought would

come on cheaper tickets, than they'd expected.

So they started an experiment part way through the exhibition

of charging half price on Saturday afternoons after two o'clock.

That would be the time when people who were working

in the local mills and warehouses would be available to come along.

And was that successful?

Some of the more enlightened employers

would encourage their workers to visit, and one

organised a day out for the whole of his workforce,

so over 2,000 people came.

But one wonders what the quality of experience was like for people

-who didn't know what they were looking at

-Yes.

It was such a vast space with so many exhibits crammed into it,

over 16,000 exhibits,

so it must have been a very confusing visual experience,

and even though the organisers had tried to arrange the paintings

in groups, if you didn't know anything about art

you would've found it quite difficult.

So it was really the first stage, they were bringing the art

to the public but they weren't really interpreting it for them.

No, they weren't.

Do we have any records of which were the most popular paintings

-in the exhibition?

-Yes, there are some accounts

which suggest that the most popular ones

were the those where you didn't need to have an art historical

-background or knowledge.

-I can imagine.

So paintings with a very strong narrative.

Paintings which were very dramatic.

For example, Wallis's Death of Chatterton.

The Hireling Shepherd by Holman Hunt,

both very colourful paintings.

The fact that contemporary narrative works by artists like Wallis

and Hunt, who were part of the new cutting edge

pre-Raphaelite movement, were in the show at all

was itself groundbreaking.

This was the first time that British 19th century painting

was hung side by side with Old Masters

for a public audience.

The message was clear - modern British art was on a par

with the old European Masters.

And it is perhaps not a surprise that paintings

like the pre-Raphealites were so popular in the Manchester show.

In an attempt to demystify art, the Pre-Raphaelites consciously

moved away from the grand manner of the Old Masters like Raphael.

Their references were more accessible

to a less traditionally-learned audience.

They depicted scenes from well-known English legends and history,

Shakespeare or the hugely popular poet Tennyson.

But their real hallmark is in creating this dreamlike intensity

with the use of vivid colours and minute attention to detail

which was very seductive.

The Pre-Raphaelites affronted the classical taste of the aristocracy,

but this contemporary art was just what the new generation

of collectors was looking for.

Freed from shackles of tradition,

they wanted something different.

This new collector had the money and confidence

to buy what he liked, not what he was supposed to like.

He was the self-made millionaire

who had profited from Victorian progress,

and he was looking to give something back to society on his own terms.

Few people epitomise this kind of collector more

than Thomas Holloway, pharmaceutical entrepreneur

and the founder of Royal Holloway College in Surrey.

A master of his universe,

once he decided to do something Thomas Holloway made it happen.

He didn't start buying art until he was 81,

and then he built up the whole collection in just two years.

When the college was first founded, it was for women only.

Today it admits men, as well.

The story of how Holloway created the wealth

to establish his collection is a classic tale of Victorian progress

from rags to riches.

Social historian Jane Hammett is a lecturer at the university

and has researched Holloway's life.

Holloway was from relatively humble origins.

His father had been in the navy and then he had a series of pubs

and I think he ended up as a grocer in Penzance,

so that was really Holloway's background.

He came from a small business sort of merchant family,

which would have encouraged him to be quite enterprising,

but I think there's no clue there to how big he eventually became.

And when do you think he started making his money?

Well, initially he actually wasn't all that successful.

He set up as a merchant in London

and he hit on the idea of marketing pills and ointments.

What he was very keen on was advertising his pills

and ointments, and at first he advertised steadily in The Times

but this didn't work at first, and he got into debt.

In fact, he himself was in debtors' prison for a short spell in the '30s

thanks to his advertising,

but actually he really stuck to it and when he came out again

he went back to it and eventually it paid off in a very major way.

So these are obviously some of the examples of his advertising.

"Free advice."

Yes, here we have a fantastic advert offering to purify the blood

-and for shortness of breath with weakness...

-And female complaints.

Hmm, yes. A large and generic category in the 19th century!

Absolutely. So what are these that you've got here?

Well, they're a series of collecting cards

which we think were made for children.

You can see that they've got this beautiful colour illustration

on the front showing different birds and different natural phenomena,

but when we turn them over we can see that we have an explanation

of what the illustration shows,

but also rather a large advert for Holloway's pills and ointments.

-Yes, two thirds advertising.

-Yes.

By the early 1870s, he'd acquired a huge amount of money

and he didn't really know what to do with it.

So it's at this point he actually advertises in the Builder

asking what a philanthropist should do with a million pounds.

It's quite an interesting new class of person actually, isn't it,

who's prepared to donate a huge sum of money,

-really, for somebody else's benefit.

-Yes.

Yes, it is interesting, and he was a great philanthropist

and what he wanted to do was partly, I think,

to give something back,

but also by founding institutions that bore his name he was,

of course, ensuring that he would be remembered for a long time to come.

The college is a remarkable legacy, but what's fascinating to me

is that at the heart of the college, Thomas Holloway decided

to create a picture gallery.

Education for women was still controversial,

so having an art collection would lend it weight and status.

Holloway bought in bulk and at speed,

and the collection was made up of art as modern and British

as the man himself.

This is Thomas Holloway's picture gallery.

Walking through it is like walking through the pages of a book

on Victorian art because there are brilliant examples

of every genre of painting popular with the collectors of the time.

There are history paintings and Bible scenes,

grand Victorian narrative paintings which look almost like stills

from a film.

Social realism like this one,

Frank Holl's Newgate: Committed for Trial.

Maybe it appealed to Holloway because of his own experience

in the debtors' prison.

And these typical Victorian landscapes

depicting the rural idyll of pre-industrial Britain.

There are all sorts of different paintings here,

but for me the unifying factor is that they all appeal directly

to the emotions. Each painting evokes an immediate response,

which is what made them so satisfactory for a man

who wanted value for money in his pictures.

This painting is called Sympathy by Briton Riviere.

It's apparently the most popular in the collection today

and it's really easy to understand why, because it's just so sweet..

The little girl has been sent in disgrace to sit on the step

accompanied by her dog.

We might be tempted to dismiss it

as an overdose of Victorian sentimentality,

but it is actually really well painted.

In fact, the harsh critic John Ruskin

even went as far as to say that

"the carpet looks as if it's been laid by Veronese."

I'm not sure what I think about that,

but it is on the detail and the finish.

I mean, look at the little girl's face.

Her eyes are actually welling up with tears.

And of course detail and finish were highly-prized

by the Victorian collector,

because they were a testament to hard work and effort.

Holloway created this collection through his own hard work

and effort, and as a self-made man

he had immense confidence in his taste.

This rather gruesome painting by Landseer,

which depicts the tragic loss of Sir John Franklin's expedition

to navigate the North West passage was the most expensive

in the collection.

Holloway paid a record auction price of £6,615.

The equivalent of half a million today, and in so doing

raised a few eyebrows in the established art world.

Ironically, for the most expensive painting,

it certainly isn't the most popular today.

This dramatic picture shows the futility of human effort

in the face of the destructive forces of nature.

The two polar bears tear at the remnants of the expedition.

There's no sentimentality here.

In fact, during exam time, however, it's said to bring bad luck,

so the students apparently cover it up with a Union Jack.

Whether the picture brings bad luck or not, for the rest of the year

at least the students here have the benefit

of one individual's commitment to collect art.

Thomas Holloway wasn't the only one collecting in this way.

Other rich individuals were establishing or bequeathing

collections for the public to enjoy, and municipal art galleries

graced most cities in Britain by the end of the 19th century.

But the modernising Britain had an impact on the countryside, too.

As the 19th century progressed, some old English aristocratic families

were beginning to struggle to maintain their estates

and family treasures were put up for sale.

Now some of the newly rich began to take advantage

of British pictures coming onto the market.

Family portraits that had once been personal commissions

intended to reflect the status of Dukes and Lords

were now available to buy.

And one of the beneficiaries of this

was the great European banking dynasty the Rothschilds.

In the 1870s, the Duke of Marlborough sold off some of his land

here in Buckinghamshire,

and it was bought by Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild,

who then set about building himself a veritable palace to art.

From the outside, Waddesdon looks like a fabulous chateaux

in the Loire Valley rather than a traditional English country house.

It also has a very different story to tell.

Unlike the grand houses of the 17th and 18th centuries,

the lifetime's work of successive generations,

this fabulous house, with its equally extraordinary collection,

was created by Ferdinand Rothschild from nothing in just seven years.

The outside is impressive,

but inside, the feeling of opulence is heightened.

The Prime Minister Gladstone's daughter wrote when she visited

the house that she felt "oppressed with the extreme

"gorgeousness and luxury."

The Rothschilds were one of the richest

and most powerful families in Europe in 19th century,

and made their fortune as bankers to monarchs and governments.

Ferdinand himself was born in Paris, raised in Frankfurt and Vienna

and then settled in England in 1859.

Collecting was in his family DNA.

When Ferdinand wrote his reminiscences, he dedicated a chapter

to his art collecting which he called Bric-a-Brac,

and in it there's a wonderfully evocative description

of his early motivation for collecting.

As a child, he was allowed to help his father

pack up their art collection when they went to their summer house.

And he writes, "It was my privilege on these occasions

"to place some of the smaller articles in their old leather cases,"

"and then again in the winter to assist in unpacking them

"and rearranging them in their places.

"Merely to touch them sent a thrill of delight through my small frame."

Between them, the five branches of the Rothschild dynasty

owned 40 great treasure houses spread across Europe,

including seven in Buckinghamshire itself,

making them the greatest collectors of the 19th century.

But what is important about the Rosthchilds

is not just the fact that they amassed so much,

but that they established a distinct individual taste.

Different from the conventional classical taste

of the British aristocracy, and from that for contemporary art

shared by many British industrialists.

150 years later, Ferdinand's collection is still intact

and the current Lord Rothschild is the custodian

of this extraordinary collection.

It's really clear from the whole house that Baron Ferdinand

was passionate about collecting,

but do you think it was a lifelong passion for him?

What had happened to him,

sadly, was that his wife had died in childbirth,

and the child died, as well.

So Ferdinand was left on his own

and eccentrically to console himself

he built this enormous house

as a kind of vehicle within which he could collect,

and that's what he spent the rest of his life doing.

He clearly had a very defined taste,

-which has come to be known as Le Gout Rothschild.

-Yes.

Well, I think what happened was that the Rothschild family

made money in the first half of the 19th century,

and then the second half they started to spend it.

They were all very close with one another

and very often, if there was a collection that came up for sale,

they would kind of hunt as a pack

and divide it up or buy it together.

Gradually, there emerged, therefore, a kind of Gout Rothschild.

This combination was a bit odd.

French 18th-century furniture with English portraits,

but then if you think about it, it's perhaps not so surprising

because they were I think anxious to assimilate themselves

into the English countryside.

They built these seven big houses in Buckinghamshire

and to show that they were kind of part and parcel of English life,

they collected English 18th-century portraits like Reynolds,

like Gainsborough, and wanted to show those in conjunction

with their roots, which were all continental.

This is the Red Drawing Room. It's the central room in the house

and it's the first that would have been visited by guests,

so it's like a showpiece room and epitomises the taste

for which the Rothschilds became famous. That striking combination

of 18th-century English pictures

set against 18th-century French furniture and decoration.

Here we've got portraits by Gainsborough and Reynolds,

but they are hung in a room full of French furniture and textiles,

all the best of their kind.

This carpet was commissioned by Louis XIV himself

for the Louvre Palace, and the furniture was made

for the French royal family.

Waddesdon also benefitted from the sales

of the Great British aristocratic collections.

One of Ferdinand's purchases from the Duke of Hamilton's sale

was this beautiful Gainsborough portrait

of the tenth duke - a famous collector himself.

But it's another Gainsborough which was a particular favourite

of Ferdinand's.

This Gainsborough is known as the Pink Boy,

and it really sums up what I think would have appealed to Ferdinand.

With this painting he was buying into a long tradition

of English portraiture.

Gainsborough was noted for often painting his sitters

in van Dyck costume,

and there's a really strong similarity between the costume

worn by this boy and the costume worn by Charles II

when he was painted as a boy by van Dyck.

But the charming thing about this portrait is the informality.

This is not some great heir to an aristocratic family

standing in front of some grand building.

This boy looks as if he's just paused for breath

while playing in that wild Gainsborough landscape behind.

It might have been a bit sensitive

hanging someone else's family portraits on your wall,

but with this more anonymous Pink Boy,

Ferdinand was able to enjoy all the charm and fluidity

of Gainsborough's best portraits purely as a painting.

Ferdinand himself died childless,

but clearly Waddesdon was a passion, which not only dominated his life

but which he hoped would be a lasting legacy.

He kept a record of the building and contents of the house

in a beautifully bound red book.

There's a rather interesting end on page 11

about what he felt about the future of the house.

Oh, that's fascinating.

In a sense it spurs on the present generation

because what he says is, "A future generation may reap

"the chief benefit of a work which for me has been labour of love.

"I fear that Waddesdon will share the fate of most properties

"whose owners have no descendants.

"May the day be et distant where weeds will spread over

"the gardens, the terraces crumble into dust,

"the pictures and cabinets cross the Channel or the Atlantic

"and the melancholy cry of the night-jar sound

"from the deserted towers."

So he was very concerned that it should be kept together.

And so presumably, then, it's very important to you

to keep the collection together and in the house.

Yeah, I mean, sentimentally, it's important.

You know, I was left responsibility to keep it going

which I happen to enjoy very much.

And what I've tried to do is not just to make it

the collection that it was, but also to add pieces

to the collection which compliment it and indeed add to it.

Waddesdon is above all an ensemble

and the whole is much more than the sum of its parts.

You may find similar objects and paintings in museums,

but there's something extraordinary about seeing them all together

in the building for which they were bought.

In many ways, Waddesdon is unique, but that's part of its importance.

By the end of the 19th century, it was the freedom of individual taste

that was shaping art collecting in Britain.

The 18th century fashion for Grand Tour taste had given way

to a new eclecticism, which was bringing art and styles

to this country which would never have come here without them.

And often, to be slightly outside the traditional establishment, helped.

The coal valleys and industrial ports of Wales

feel a long way from an art museum in London.

But it was wealth from these places that allowed two Welsh sisters

Gwendoline and Margaret Davies to go against the prevailing taste

of the day and become the advocates for a branch of avant-garde

French art - Impressionism.

Monet's Water Lilies are now so widely loved and admired

it's difficult to imagine that when the Davies sisters were buying these,

most other British collectors were dismissing them

as pointless blobs of colour.

Gwendoline and Margaret were so ahead of their time

in appreciating the beauty of these paintings,

and recognising the value of this extraordinary new artistic movement.

They collected paintings by Renoirs, Van Goghs...

..Cezannes - all the great names of Impressionism.

How was it that two sisters in Wales

at the beginning of the 20th century were amongst just a handful

of people buying Impressionist work in Britain?

The two sisters were the daughters of a wealthy industrialist

Welsh family.

Like Thomas Holloway, they came from "new money."

Their grandfather had started life as a carpenter

but eventually formed a company, which transported coal from pits

in the Rhondda Valley to ports around the world.

Gwendoline and Margaret's father inherited the business,

but he died aged only 45 and left his considerable fortune

to be divided up equally between his son and two daughters.

The girls grew up here in Plas Dinam,

a large country house in mid Wales.

Gwendoline and Margaret were very aware of their Welsh heritage

and came from a deeply-patriotic family.

It was a non-conformist religious household,

strictly tee-total, and the girls were instilled with a strong sense

of duty to use their wealth for the benefit of others.

But it would be misleading to imagine

that they had a totally sheltered rural Welsh life.

They were privileged children.

They briefly went to boarding school in London,

and at home in Wales they would play tennis and ride horses.

They had a governess Jane Blaker who accompanied them on trips

round the London museums and galleries,

and later went with them on their travels in Europe.

In 1907, Gwendoline came into her inheritance,

and Margaret two years later.

They were said to the wealthiest unmarried women in Britain.

And almost as soon as they inherited,

they indulged in their passion for art.

They made a point of travelling through Italy

seeking out the Old Masters,

but they never really looked to acquire any.

With quiet self-confidence, they kept an open mind

to develop their own taste.

This is Margaret's diary from her trip to Italy in 1909.

And clearly, like many other British travellers before her,

she was completed seduced by Venice.

She writes really beautifully with a very artistic eye.

"Here the water quite calm seems to be made up

"of several different colours.

"Here it is blue, there again green, further on

"it seems a shade of mauve."

It could be a description of a Monet painting,

and in fact just a year before Margaret's trip

Monet himself had been to Venice.

It's perhaps not surprising that some of the Davies sisters'

earliest Impressionist acquisitions were Monet's views of Venice.

Curator Beth McIntyre has charted the sister's development

as collectors.

So did the sisters start off collecting Impressionist

straight away, or did they have to break themselves in gently?

They really start buying in earnest in about 1908,

but they don't acquire Impressionists at that stage.

They're looking at other artists, artists who were pretty well

established, artists who are known in Britain such as Turner, you know,

the big names, and here's one of the Turner receipts that we have.

-Nice big price tag.

-Well, Turner's very expensive.

In fact, they spent more on works by Turner than any other artist.

So when do you think they really started collecting

Impressionist painting?

Well, we know quite specifically

when they turned towards buying Impressionism.

We have this letter here which is from Hugh Blaker.

Hugh Blaker was one of their advisors.

He was actually the brother of their governess Jane Blaker,

but was himself an art historian, and he advises the sisters

and he also acts on their behalf.

In this letter, which is dated August 11th 1912, we can read,

"I will certainly keep my eyes open in Paris for anything good,

"and am delighted that you think of getting some examples

"of the Impressionists of 1870.

"Very few English collectors except Hugh Lane

"have bought them at all."

That's wonderful to have that letter.

Yeah, so this really marks quite a change in their collecting

and a new direction.

From that time on, from 1912, we see them spending a lot of money

particularly on the French works, on the Impressionist works.

They're looking out for other artists such as Sisley,

Pissarro, Renoir...

So we think that the sisters wrote with a list of artists

that they wanted to acquire and he's suggesting some others.

So that's incredibly forward-looking, isn't it?

It is, it's very forward-looking

and it's very forward-looking within England or within Britain,

but within Wales I would think it would be unique.

Absolutely.

So within the next few years after 1912

they buy eight Monets I think,

and works by Renoir, works by Rodin,

Manet, you know, a lot of artists,

but it's very interesting for us that we have the receipts

that we can compare prices.

Cos obviously some of the Impressionists at this stage

were still not demanding the top dollar figures

that they do nowadays.

So here we have the receipt for the Monets,

the three Water Lilies that they purchased in one acquisition

in 1913.

And all of those three purchases you can see for £3,370.

So this is incredible.

I think that's what's so fascinating about these sisters

-cos they were really sure of their own taste.

-They were.

They went about putting a collection together very much

with their own taste in mind.

As collectors at the time they were revolutionary.

They championed a whole new movement.

They were going in a new direction,

and one that was yet to be fully accepted within Britain.

And extraordinary that it was two women who did this.

Yes, and that's very important as well, I think

for the history of female collectors.

This striking painting, Renoir's La Parisienne,

really stands out in this collection.

It shows a sophisticated lady elegantly dressed in blue

and she holds the viewer directly in her gaze.

The mark of a truly independent woman.

I love to think of this appealing to these two pioneer women collectors.

And it's rather fitting that they should have bought on the eve

of the outbreak of the first world war which was to have such an impact

on the lives of women in general,

and in particular on those of the Davies sisters.

Frustrated at observing the suffering of the war

from a distance, in 1916 Gwendoline volunteered

at the London Committee of the Red Cross.

She was sent to Troyes,

just outside Paris where she managed a "cantine des dames anglaises."

The idea was to provide coffee, snacks and cigarettes

to the French troops.

The women who joined had to fund themselves so were all middle class.

Some even took maids with them, and most had probably barely made

a cup of coffee before, let alone survived on the front line of a war.

Margaret joined Gwendoline in France in 1917

and threw herself into the work with her sister.

It wasn't easy and the front line gradually edged closer towards them.

Despite all the difficulties of the war, the sisters

retained their passion for art. A more liberated attitude

towards women was developing and Gwendoline seized the opportunity

to travel alone to Paris. There she browsed the galleries

and continued to buy paintings,

including two wonderful landscapes by Cezanne.

While the war ushered in a more modern progressive attitude

towards women, the London art establishment

was not still not ready for the modern art

that Gwendoline brought home.

The sisters had always been very generous loaning their works

to everyone from the local WI to national museums.

But when Gwendoline offered to loan this Cezanne landscape,

The Francois Zola Dam, to the Tate, she was turned down.

There are some colourful documents that record the reaction.

At that stage, there were no Cezanne paintings on display

in the national collections.

Through Hugh Blaker, they offered to lend two paintings to them.

And here we can see the reply that the Tate

or the National Gallery Board had met and expressed their thanks,

but unfortunately decided not to accept the loan

of the works by Cezanne.

So.... They turned them down.

-They turned them down.

-Yes.

-My goodness.

And, erm, Blaker, who's acting for the sisters here,

then writes to Gwendoline Davies,

And we have, "The enclosed from Aitken.

"I'm absolutely disgusted.

"The excuse of no space is not justifiable.

"They could easily haul down a Mancini or something

"and hang these two pictures in its place.

"So this country is still unique in having no examples of Cezanne

"in its national collections.

-"Hopeless!"

-Hopeless!

Despite the purchases of the Cezannes after the war,

the sisters' collecting slowed down.

Although many women in Britain had lost loved ones,

few had seen the destruction and horror the war caused first-hand.

Increasingly, Gwendoline especially found it hard to reconcile

the indulgence of collecting with the social deprivation

and need in the 1920s.

After the war, the sisters' focus changed from collecting art

to setting up a centre for the promotion of art in Wales.

And they did here at Gregynog Hall.

They bought this house in 1920, and although it became their home

and housed the collection, its main purpose was to be a cultural centre

to promote art, music and social change in Wales.

Imagine this house deep in rural Wales

full of Impressionist paintings.

That's how it would've been when the Davies sisters lived here.

These were two remarkable women.

Not only did they build a revolutionary collection,

but they also made a place here at Gregynog where artists, writers,

politicians and musicians could come and discuss ideas and be inspired.

The sisters didn't completely abandon collecting,

but by 1924 the majority of their buying of Impressionist painting

was done.

Gwendoline died in 1951, but Margaret lived on until 1963.

It was entirely in keeping with Gwendoline and Margaret's life

that on their deaths they left their collections as a whole

to the National Museum of Wales.

Gwendoline once said the great love of collecting is doing it yourself,

with expert opinion granted, but one does like to choose

for one's self, and to me that's what's so wonderful

about this collection.

It still has a really personal flavour.

Gwendoline and Margaret Davies are great examples

of how private collectors have shaped the history of art

of a nation.

As private buyers, they can afford to take risks

and follow their own paths.

And it's thanks to great collectors like these

that Britain is home to such a unique and extensive range

of art collections.

Over 400 years, British private collectors

have helped to move the history of art in this country.

From pioneer collectors in the 17th century

whose travels overseas brought back Italian Old Masters

and introduced the light of the renaissance

to Britain's dark shores...

..to the Golden Age of collecting in the 18th century

when stately homes dedicated to art spread across the countryside.

And the aristocracy imported the finest continental art

in unprecedented quantity.

As well as patronising new emerging British artists.

Finally, it was thanks to private collectors

that in the 19th century, art moved from being enjoyed

in the exclusive drawing rooms of the aristocracy

to being shared in public galleries.

Private collectors have profoundly influenced the taste of a nation,

and their connoisseurship,

passion and commitment to collecting has hugely contributed

to the rich and diverse art heritage that Britain boasts today.

Many of the paintings collected and commissioned by Great British

collectors are now in public ownership.

To find out more, visit...

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