Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-fbnjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-02T18:52:20.806Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

6 - Allies of the Republic?

Inside the Sale of the Century (c.1870–1895)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 June 2020

Tom Stammers
Affiliation:
University of Durham
Get access

Summary

This chapter is centred on what was widely seen as the sale of the nineteenth century- the 1893 dispersal of the Spitzer collections. Austrian-born Frédéric Spitzer in many ways was the inheritor of the salvage crusade begun in earlier generations, building up a brilliant array of medieval and Renaissance artefacts (including some faked and composite pieces created on his commission). This chapter explores the visibility of Spitzer in French print culture in order to interrogate the claims for private collectors as patriots, and the attempt by the Third Republic to make collectors into auxiliaries of national policy. The scandal surrounding his sale exposes the anxieties about the interplay of private interest and public institutions, the sensitivity about curators like Émile Molinier when they operated in the market, as well as the virulence of anti-Semitic hostility to Jewish dealers. Most pervasive was the wider fear that French heritage was increasingly snapped up and repatriated by foreign buyers, so that the 1893 sale could be alternately depicted as a triumph, a swindle or a defeat for French culture.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Purchase of the Past
Collecting Culture in Post-Revolutionary Paris c.1790–1890
, pp. 243 - 285
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • Allies of the Republic?
  • Tom Stammers, University of Durham
  • Book: The Purchase of the Past
  • Online publication: 01 June 2020
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108781268.007
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Allies of the Republic?
  • Tom Stammers, University of Durham
  • Book: The Purchase of the Past
  • Online publication: 01 June 2020
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108781268.007
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Allies of the Republic?
  • Tom Stammers, University of Durham
  • Book: The Purchase of the Past
  • Online publication: 01 June 2020
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108781268.007
Available formats
×