19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century

Issue 31:
Women Collectors: Taste, Legacy, and Cultural Philanthropy c. 1850-1920
Guest edited by Tom Stammers

This issue of 19 explores the contribution of women as collectors from the mid-nineteenth century to the aftermath of the First World War, paying particular attention to the cosmopolitan transfer of artworks, ideas, and expertise between Britain, France, and the United States. The authors reflect on women's role in acquiring, displaying, and donating works of art, often in ways that crossed national borders or that subvert gendered assumptions about taste. Beyond its value as a form of personal expression, the articles reflect on how far collecting provided women with a public platform in the late nineteenth century, enabling them to shape the contents of cultural institutions and promote new types of inquiry. But the articles also cast light on the archival and methodological reasons why women's crucial contributions in this domain have so often been obscured.


Introduction

Women Collectors and Cultural Philanthropy, c. 1850–1920
Tom Stammers


Article

'Life was a spectacle for her': Lady Dorothy Nevill as Art Collector, Political Hostess, and Cultural Philanthropist
Caroline McCaffrey-Howarth

Beyond the Bowes Museum: The Social and Material Worlds of Alphonsine Bowes de Saint-Amand
Lindsay Macnaughton

French Taste in Victorian England: The Collection of Yolande Lyne-Stephens
Laure-Aline Griffith-Jones

Unmasking an Enigma: Who Was Lady Wallace and What Did She Achieve?
Suzanne Higgott

More than Mere Ornaments: Female Visitors to Sir Richard Wallace's Art Collection
Helen C. Jones

New Collections for New Women: Collecting and Commissioning Portraits at the Early Women's University Colleges
Imogen Tedbury

Ellen Tanner's Persia: A Museum Legacy Rediscovered
Catrin Jones

The Artistic Patronage and Transatlantic Connections of Florence Blumenthal
Rebecca Tilles

A Woman of No Importance?: Elizabeth Workman's Collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Art in Context
Frances Fowle


Afterword

Afterword
Kate Hill