Colin Platt - Marks of Opulence - The Why, When and Where of Western Art 1000–1914

With the greater part of rich people, the chief enjoyment of riches consists in the parade of riches, which in their eye is never so complete as when they appear to possess those decisive marks of opulence which nobody can possess but themselves.

Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), Book One, Chapter xi.

Cover

Title Page MARKS OF OPULENCE The Why, When and Where of Western Art 1000–1900 AD Colin Platt

Epigraph Epigraph Epigraph Introduction CHAPTER ONE A White Mantle of Churches CHAPTER TWO Commercial Revolution CHAPTER THREE Recession and Renaissance CHAPTER FOUR Expectations Raised and Dashed CHAPTER FIVE Religious Wars and Catholic Renewal CHAPTER SIX Markets and Collectors CHAPTER SEVEN Bernini’s Century CHAPTER EIGHT Enlightened Absolutism CHAPTER NINE Revolution CHAPTER TEN The Gilded Age Notes Index P.S. Ideas, Interviews & Features … About the Author Profile of Colin Platt Life at a Glance Top Ten Favourite Books About the Book A Critical Eye The Bigger Picture Read On Have You Read? If You Loved This, You’ll Like … Find Out More About the Author Copyright About the Publisher With the greater part of rich people, the chief enjoyment of riches consists in the parade of riches, which in their eye is never so complete as when they appear to possess those decisive marks of opulence which nobody can possess but themselves. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), Book One, Chapter xi.

Introduction

CHAPTER ONE A White Mantle of Churches

CHAPTER TWO Commercial Revolution

CHAPTER THREE Recession and Renaissance

CHAPTER FOUR Expectations Raised and Dashed

CHAPTER FIVE Religious Wars and Catholic Renewal

CHAPTER SIX Markets and Collectors

CHAPTER SEVEN Bernini’s Century

CHAPTER EIGHT Enlightened Absolutism

CHAPTER NINE Revolution

CHAPTER TEN The Gilded Age

Notes

Index

P.S. Ideas, Interviews & Features …

About the Author

Profile of Colin Platt

Life at a Glance

Top Ten Favourite Books

About the Book

A Critical Eye

The Bigger Picture

Read On

Have You Read?

If You Loved This, You’ll Like …

Find Out More

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

‘The simple truth’, wrote Philip Hamerton, ‘is that capital is the nurse and governess of the arts, not always a very wise or judicious nurse, but an exceedingly powerful one. And in the relation of money to art, the man who has money will rule the man who has art … (for) starving men are weak.’ ( Thoughts about Art , 1873) Hamerton was a landscape-painter who had studied both in London and in Paris. However, it was chiefly as a critic and as the founding-editor of The Portfolio (1870–94) that he made his contribution to the arts. In 1873, Hamerton had lived through a quarter-century of economic growth: one of the most sustained booms ever recorded. He had seen huge fortunes made, and knew the power of money:

But [he warned] for capital to support the fine arts, it must be abundant – there must be superfluity. The senses will first be gratified to the full before the wants of the intellect awaken. Plenty of good meat and drink is the first desire of the young capitalist; then he must satisfy the ardours of the chase. One or two generations will be happy with these primitive enjoyments of eating and slaying; but a day will come when the descendant and heir of these will awake into life with larger wants. He will take to reading in a book, he will covet the possession of a picture; and unless there are plenty of such men as he in a country, there is but a poor chance there for the fine arts. 1

In mid-Victorian Britain, it was Hamerton’s industrialist contemporaries – many of them the inheritors of successful family businesses – who were the earliest patrons of the Pre-Raphaelites. A generation later, it would be American railroad billionaires and their widows who created the market for French Impressionists. ‘You’ve got a wonderful house – and another in the country’, ran a recent double-spread advertisement in a consumer magazine. ‘You’ve got a beautiful car – and a luxury four-wheel-drive. You’ve got a gorgeous wife – and she says that she loves you. Isn’t it time to spoil yourself?’ 2 If one man’s trophy asset is a BeoVision Avant , another’s positional good is a Cézanne.

Positional goods are assets, like Cézannes, with a high scarcity value. They appeal especially to super-rich collectors, wanting the reassurance of ‘those decisive marks of opulence which nobody can possess but themselves’. 3 But for the fine arts to prosper generally and for new works to be commissioned, the overall economy must be healthy: ‘there must [in Hamerton’s words] be superfluity’. ‘Accept the simplest explanation that fits all the facts at your disposal’ is the principle known as Occam’s Razor. And while economic growth has never been the only condition for investment in the arts, it is (and always has been) the most necessary. Collectors pay high prices when the market is rising; even the best painters need an income to continue. It was Sickert, the English Impressionist, who once told Whistler, ‘painting must be for me a profession and not a pastime’. And it was Sickert’s contemporary, Stanhope Forbes, who confessed to his mother, just before his fortunes changed: ‘The wish to do something that will sell seems to deprive me of all power over brushes and paints.’ Forbes’s marine masterpiece, A Fish Sale on a Cornish Beach (1885), painted in Newlyn the following year, at last brought him the recognition he had craved.

Before that happened, Forbes had depended on the support of well-off parents. And very few aspiring artists, even today, can succeed without an early helping hand. ‘Princes and writers’, wrote John Capgrave in 1440, ‘have always been mutually bound to each other by a special friendship … (for) writers are protected by the favour of princes and the memory of princes endures by the labour of writers.’ Capgrave (the scholar) wanted a pension from Duke Humphrey (the prince). So he put Humphrey the question: ‘Who today would have known of Lucilius [procurator of Sicily and other Roman provinces] if Seneca had not made him famous by his Letters? ’ Equally, however, ‘those men of old, who adorned the whole body of philosophy by their studies, did not make progress without the encouragement of princes’. In Duke Humphrey’s day, ‘it is not the arts that are lacking, as someone says, but the honours given to the arts’. Accordingly, ‘Grant us a Pyrrhus and you will give us a Homer. Grant us a Pompey and you will give us a Tullius (Cicero). Grant us a Gaius (Maecenas) and Augustus and you will also give us a Virgil and a Flaccus (Horace).’ 4