Monday 19 September 2005

Sovereign Collections

It�s no coincidence that some of the most important art museums in the world were founded with royal art collections; most recognizably, the Prado in Madrid, the Louvre in Paris, and the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg. For hundreds of years, reigning sovereigns have amassed large quantities of the best paintings, historic artifacts, contemporary master crafts and books, just to name a few, for personal enjoyment and self-aggrandizement. In some cases, the collections of specific works of art by ruling families have even made those pieces nearly synonymous with royalty. Mention Faberg� eggs, for instance, and most people will instantly think of the Russian tsars of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

But beyond the traditional and the well-known, there are many great royal collections that escape wide attention and public acclaim, fail to garner instant recognition, and � occasionally � depart from the conventional. Although not necessarily obscure, these collections are often overlooked by the mainstream public or ignored by tourists dutifully following the red umbrella � serious mistakes considering that many of these collections tell as much or more about the royals who assembled them than do their more popular cousins. Less tangible, but often just as interesting, are those historic royal collections that have long been dispersed and those that are still primarily private.  

Many of these unique historical royal collections are highly reflective of the times of their royal patrons. In the 15th century, for instance, King Edward IV collected illuminated manuscripts. Why a king well-known for �vanity, drunkenness, extravagance and passion� would have had such a proclivity toward objects so closely associated with pious devotion to God�s word may be explained by the fashions of his day. While highly prized for their religious importance, illuminated manuscripts would also have been treasured among society�s elite for their artistic value, therefore identifying the collector as a patron of the arts. Whatever Edward IV�s reasons for collecting illuminated manuscripts, his collection managed to survive the centuries intact, thanks in part to King George II, who donated it to the brand new British Museum in 1757. Today, the collection is housed at the British Library and has the distinction of being the country�s only surviving medieval royal collection.   

Similarly, when 18th century society was gripped by the snuff craze, valuable gold snuffboxes were an important way for the very wealthy to publicly demonstrate that they were not only highly fashionable, but also incredibly well-off. The more elaborate and expensive the box, the better, with the best made of precious metals and encrusted with jewels or decorated with fine handiwork or miniature portraits. The snuffbox was considered such an important part of a fashionable gentlemen�s outfit that in 1781, French writer and dramatist Louis-S�bastien Mercier wrote in his Le Tableau de Paris that men should have a different snuffbox for every single day of the year, opting for lighter boxes for warm months and heavier ones for cold months.

Naturally, a king would have felt obliged to trump everyone in this regard, and one king did just that. Frederick the Great of Prussia � who obviously took Mercier seriously � owned more than 300 gold snuff boxes, many of which were ornately jeweled and are today considered �the most sumptuous and extravagant ever made.� Unfortunately, only 26 are known to have survived, but those that do remain give us an excellent sense of the value and beauty of the original collection. That and the fact that just one of them sold at auction in 1992 for 2,530,000 Swiss Francs � about $2,000,000 or �1,100,000 today.

Decidedly less glamorous than gold snuff boxes, but undoubtedly just as valuable (at least to those interested in science), is the collection of natural history specimens collected by King Adolf Fredrik of Sweden (1710-1771) and his wife, Louisa Ulrika of Prussia. Apparently, it was fashionable in the 18th century to keep a �natural history cabinet,� so the King and his consort collected no fewer than 1,100 jars of alcohol-preserved specimens and untold numbers of shells, corals and insects, all of which are now housed at the Swedish Museum of Natural History.

Closer to our own time, Britain�s King George V was an avid stamp collector who helped assemble what the official site of the British monarchy calls �the most comprehensive collection in the world of postage stamps devoted to the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth.� The collection, which is considered personal property of the sovereign, was actually started by Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, Queen Victoria�s second son. It was eventually passed to the future George V when he was still Duke of York. As it turned out, he proved the perfect philatelist, and became president of the Royal Philatelic Society London in 1896. Not generally an extravagant man, he paid a record �1,459 (about �96,000 or $173,000 today) in 1904 for an 1847 Mauritius stamp. The value of the entire collection today is nearly unthinkable and may actually be impossible to valuate.  

Just as with common collectors, the urge to collect among royalty is often centered on people, animals and other living things. For Prince Louis II of Monaco, his fascination with Napol�on Bonaparte inspired him to put together an impressive collection of more than 1,000 items associated with the Corsican and his French empire, all of which are on display at the Prince�s Palace in Monaco. And speaking of Napol�on, his first wife, the Empress Josephine, had a living collection of more than 250 types of roses in her gardens at Malmaison.

Back to Britain, it�s well-remembered that King Charles II had a passion for collecting both spaniel dogs and beautiful women, always keeping several of both nearby at any given time. The longest connection was with the dogs, however, since his father, Charles I, had introduced them as pets to his young children. Through all the tumult of the English Civil War, the younger Charles� passion for the little dogs never waned, and by the time we was king, he was serious enough about his canine companions that he decreed that they could not be forbidden entrance to any public place, not even the Houses of Parliament. The extent of the Merry Monarch�s canine collection is signified by the fact that a dozen spaniels were with him at his bedside when he died, while its legacy is evident in the name of the particular breed he favored � the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. 

Charles II�s collection of beautiful women is also tangible today in the form of a collection of paintings by Sir Peter Lely known as the Windsor Beauties. In the 1660�s, Charles� sister-in-law, Anne Hyde, Duchess of York, commissioned the artist to paint portraits of 10 of the most beautiful women at Charles� Court, including one of his mistresses, the Duchess of Cleveland. Located in the Communications Gallery at Hampton Court Palace, the portraits are clearly painted to accentuate the most attractive aspects of each woman, a technique that was undoubtedly appreciated by the king. Interestingly, a similar collection of paintings was commissioned by Anne Hyde�s daughter, Queen Mary II. Known as the Hampton Court Beauties and also housed at Hampton Court, Mary commissioned Sir Godfrey Kneller to immortalize her own collection of beautiful court women � her ladies-in-waiting.

While most monarchs focused their attentions on one or two collections, Britain�s King George III seemed to collect just about anything within reach, including clocks, books, maps, coins, medals and scientific and meteorological devices. Several of these collections served as the foundation for important British national collections. After the king�s death in 1820, his son and successor, King George IV, donated his massive book collection to the nation. Consisting of around 65,000 books and 19,000 pamphlets from the 15th to 19th centuries, the collection formed The King�s Library in the British Library and is considered one of the most important collections of Enlightenment texts. Similarly, in 1843, Queen Victoria donated her grandfather�s collection of scientific and meteorological equipment to King�s College London for instructional use. The collection is currently displayed at the Science Museum in London and is considered one of the most comprehensive collections of scientific equipment from the 18th century.

There�s little doubt that most collectors � royal or not � share a real enthusiasm for their collections, but some royal collectors had a tendency to take their passion a little too far. Augustus �The Strong,� King of Poland and Elector of Saxony (d. 1733), was a devoted collector of ceramics, particularly of the delicate Asian white, hard-paste porcelain known to Europeans as �White Gold.� Unfortunately, the Chinese and Japanese were unwilling to share the correct method of making this fine porcelain, and Europeans had tried without success for three centuries to discover the secret. Living up to his epithet, Augustus was so determined to duplicate the Asian ceramics, he imprisoned alchemist Johann Friedrich B�ttger and demanded that he come up with the correct formula. Luckily for B�ttger and to Augustus� delight, the alchemist was successful. In 1709, B�ttger perfected the formula and the following year Augustus began the manufacture of Europe�s first porcelain at Albrechtsburg Castle in Meissen.

Of course, no discussion on royal collecting would be complete without mentioning Queen Mary, consort of Britain�s King George V. Mary�s obsessive zeal for collecting was not exclusive to any one object, but ran the gamut from dispersed royal treasures to Faberg� animals to paintings to jewels. For her efforts, she is credited with reorganizing and significantly adding to the British royal art collection, making the royal family�s massive jewel collection one of the finest of its kind, and reacquiring many important pieces from the dispersed collections of another queen consort, Queen Charlotte, wife of King George III.

Today, Queen Mary's collecting legacy is relatively invisible, as much of it has been absorbed into the vast interiors of the most important royal residences, such as Windsor Castle, Buckingham Palace and Holyrood House. One key exception is her very noticeable contribution to the massive royal jewel collection of Queen Elizabeth II. On a smaller scale, Queen Mary�s collections can also be found in greater concentration at places like Frogmore House, where no fewer than two rooms are filled with her various collections. There, �Queen Mary�s Flower Room� houses her collection of 19th century wax and silk flowers, while �The Black Museum� features her collection of 19th century black lacquer and papier-m�ch� furniture and objets d�art. 

But while there�s little doubt that Queen Mary was a shrewd collector, one of her most fascinating collections � Queen Mary�s Dolls� House � was not her creation at all. This five-foot high masterpiece of miniature craftsmanship was inspired and organized by Princess Marie Louise of Schleswig-Holstein, a cousin of George V, and presented as a gift to the Queen. Designed by renowned architect Sir Edwin Lutyens and decorated and furnished in minute and exacting detail by some of the finest craftsmen of the time, the dollhouse today represents a time-capsule of early 20th century Britain and royal life. 

Looking ahead, today�s decidedly modern monarchs are undoubtedly busy assembling the royal museum collections of the future. In Spain, motorcycle enthusiast King Juan Carlos I has a bike collection that, were its contents more widely known, would likely make any motorhead start foaming at the mouth. Similarly, as time passes, more historical royal collections will come into public view for the first time. Some lost or forgotten royal collections will even be rediscovered, as was the case in 2004 when Lichtenstein�s Princely Collection was installed at the Lichtenstein Museum after nearly 70 years in storage. But whether or not they ever become public and no matter what the object being collected, royal collections rarely disappoint and many simply reign supreme in the vast world of collecting.

Until next time, 

- Tori Van Orden Mart�nez

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For more information on the royal collections highlighted, visit the following links: 

• King Edward IV�s illuminated manuscripts at the British Library

• Six of Frederick the Great of Prussia�s gold snuff boxes in
  the Gilbert Collection at Somerset House in London

• King Adolf Fredrik and Queen Louisa Ulrika of Sweden�s
  natural history specimens (Museum Adolphi Friderici)

• Britain�s Royal Philatelic Collection (King George V)

• The Museum of Napoleon Souvenirs at the Prince�s Palace in Monaco

• The King�s Library (George III) at the British Library

• The Science Museum�s King George III Collection

• History of Meissen porcelain (Augustus �The Strong�)

• Queen Mary's collections at Frogmore House

• Queen Mary�s Doll�s House at Windsor Castle