A collector of distinction: Sir William Holburne

A small bronze sculpture of Venuz by the Florentine Antonio Susini (active 1580-1625) encapsulates the quality and mystery of the collection to which it has belonged for over a hundred years (Fig. 1). (1) This Venus, which is notable for the exquisite quality of its design and workmanship, is the work of one of the most renowned assistants of Giambologna (1529-1608). It has a distinguished provenance front the collection of Louis XIV, and yet possesses a modesty both in its configuration and in its size. The same characteristics can be recognised in the collection to which it belongs, that of the Holburne Museum of Art in Bath.

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Since 1916, the Museum has occupied a fine late eighteenth-century building, the former Sydney Hotel, in the picturesque setting of England's only surviving eighteenth-century public pleasure gardens. It bas long been recognised as one of Britain's most delightful small independent museums (Fig. 4). (2) The Museum's collection is still essentially that or its founder, Sir William Holburne (1793-1874), and current re-appraisal is re-establishing his significance as a highly individual Victorian collector of fine and decorative art (Fig. 2). (3)

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This is apparent in three major areas. First, Holburne's approach to collecting began with an unusual background. Second, his personal circumstances had a particular influence on his ability to collect and display his works of art. The survival, virtually intact, of a mid-nineteenth-century town house collection is all the more remarkable and unusual as a result. Third, Holburne's long life eventually placed him in the group of distinguished Victorian collectors who made their private hoards permanently available for public inspection and education.

Holburne's art collection remains almost completely intact, but the documentary evidence about his acquisitions is extremely fragmentary, and has frustrated scholars over three generations. Virtually no journals or diaries survive to permit any chronological account of his activity. Only a few letters, images and accounts exist which give any insight into his character. (4) Although he is known to have acquired some of his finest pieces at auction or shortly thereafter in the 1840s and 1850s, from the Beckford, Duke of Sussex and Montferrand Collections (Fig. 5), frustratingly no bills or correspondence have yet come to light concerning when, how and where he collected over five thousand other objects, comprising paintings, sculpture, bronzes, gems, ceramics, minerals, silver, silver gilt, drawings, prints, books and other works of art. (5) Surviving documents indicate that Holburne was a meticulous man, but keeping detailed records of the purchasing of works of art and curiosities was hot a general habit in the nineteenth century. (6)

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However, re-examination of those documents which do survive in the Museum's archive, and reassessment of the collection itself, is re-establishing Holburne's reputation as a significant figure in the history of nineteenth-century British collecting. For all that he is not quite their equal, he may be compared with his fellow resident and collector in Bath in the early nineteenth century, William Beckford (1760-1844), and other contemporaries such as the Reverend John Sanford (1777-1855), the substantial residue of whose collection of Italian art survives at Corsham Court, Wiltshire. (7) Nor was he on a par with the 3rd and 4th Marquesses of Hertford and Sir Richard Wallace, John and Josephine Bowes, or the first Viscount Leverhulme, but this does not belittle his significance. (8)

The distinctiveness of Holburne's approach to collecting lies in his status in his family, as a younger son, and in his early career as a naval officer, neither of which gave him any immediate advantages in terms of wealth or education which might have launched him into a world of cognoscenti or collectors. Born near Swansea in 1793, he was the fifth child and third son of Sir Francis and Lady (Alicia) Holburne. (9) Little is known of his shadowy father, although his grandfather, Admiral Francis Holburne (1704-71), had gained considerable public recognition in the Seven Years' War. (10) Sir Francis's two surviving sons were both destined For active service rather than the leisurely life of gentry on a country estate. The elder, another Francis, joined the army in 1809, was commissioned in the 3rd Foot Guards, fought under Wellington through the Peninsular Campaign and died of wounds after a skirmish near Bayonne in 1814 (Fig. 3). (11)

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The younger, William, had joined the navy in July 1805 at the age of eleven and within months saw action at Trafalgar on HMS Orion. (12) The following years of service saw him at the blockade of Toulon in 1806, in the West Indies in 1808, on the notoriously lever-ridden Brazil station from 1810-12, and back in the Mediterranean, the Western Approaches and the English Channel, before coming home on hall pay in 1815. (13) Under such circumstances, his survival into adulthood was by no means unremarkable.