Peter Humfrey – författare

An authoritative and comprehensive celebration of the life and work of one of the most prominent artists of the Venetian RenaissanceMeticulously researched and luxuriously illustrated, this volume offers a comprehensive view of Vittore Carpaccio (c. 1460/1466–1525/1526), whose work has been admired for centuries for its fantastical settings enriched with contemporary incident and detail. Capturing the sanctity and splendor of Venice at the turn of the sixteenth century, when the city controlled a vast maritime empire, Carpaccio combined careful observation of the urban environment with a taste for the poetic in his beloved narrative cycles and altarpieces.Providing a new lens through which to understand Carpaccio’s work, a team of distinguished scholars explores various aspects of his art, including his achievement as a draftsman. In addition to emphasizing the artist’s innovative techniques and contributions to the development of Venetian Renaissance painting, this study includes an in-depth consideration of the fluctuations in the reception of Carpaccio’s work in the five hundred years since the artist’s death. Published in association with the National Gallery of Art, Washington  Exhibition Schedule:National Gallery of Art, Washington(November 20, 2022–February 12, 2023)Palazzo Ducale, Venice(March 18–June 18, 2023)

The Regency was a period of crucial importance in the history of collecting Old Master paintings in England. As the owners of aristocratic collections in France and Italy were forced by the political upheavals following the French Revolution to part with their inherited possessions, Old Masters arrived on the London art market in unprecedented quantity and quality. This book presents seven case studies of English collectors of the period, tracing how their collections were formed, and analysing the taste that guided them. Also discussed here are how these new owners displayed their acquisitions and how they sought to organise them into a new unity. Peter Humfrey examines in detail seven notable Regency collectors – the 4th Earl Darnley, the 2nd Earl Grosvenor, Amabel de Grey, Sir Richard Colt Hoare, Philip John Miles, Samuel Rogers, and the 5th Earl Cowper. All were of course from the upper ranks of society. They nevertheless show, as well as many other similarities, several telling differences. They were from both the higher and lesser nobility, and the gentry; they acquired their fortunes (and collections) through inheritance, but also made them anew; predictably, most of the collectors were men, but one to be discussed here was a woman; some chose to house their collections in central London, but others at their seats in the country; and within the parameters of fashionable taste, the seven show rather different priorities in their choices of schools, scale, and subject matter. No doubt, too, the collectors selected here were motivated by different considerations, and fashion, financial investment, and political and social self-promotion – in addition, presumably, to aesthetic pleasure – must all have played a part. For each case study an Appendix lists the paintings they acquired. Together the appendices may serve to give a general idea of the prevailing taste among collectors during the Regency period. Among the Italian paintings, the Carracci and their Bolognese followers (Domenichino, Albani, Guido Reni, Guercino) feature prominently. Other highly sought-after Old Masters included Poussin, Claude and Dughet, and no less attractive to the Romantic generation were the contrastingly wild landscapes of Salvator Rosa. Published by Paul Holberton Publishing

The book will provides the first detailed history of the Bridgewater collection. The story extends from the 3rd Duke of Bridgewater's purchases in Rome in the 1750s, then on to the major acquisitions of the 1790s (especially from the Orleans collection), then through the incorporation of the collection into the Stafford Gallery by the 2nd Marquess of Stafford (1st Duke of Sutherland), and finally to its reinstallation by Lord Francis Egerton in the new Bridgewater House in 1851.As well as providing a detailed account of the personalities and differing motives of three generations of collectors and owners, the book examines the ways in which the collection was arranged and displayed. It also discusses reactions to it by contemporaries, from sophisticated critics such as William Hazlitt, to the general public, and analyses major publications on it such as the four-volume illustrated catalogue by William Young Ottley of 1818.The illustrations will include many works sold from the collection aft er 1946 and now widely dispersed.