, of Chinese
Jingdezhen porcelain but adorned with metallic mounts in Europe, was the earliest piece of
Chinese porcelain documented to reach Europe, in 1338. It was once in the possession of William Beckford. It is now in the
National Museum of Ireland. Beckford was a compulsive and restless collector, who also frequently sold works, sometimes later repurchasing them. His collection was notable for its many Italian
Quattrocento paintings, then little collected and relatively inexpensive. Despite his interest in Romantic medievalism, he owned few medieval works, though many from the Renaissance. He was also interested in showy Asian objects such as
Mughal hardstone carvings. Although he avoided the classical marbles typically sought by well-educated English collectors, much of his collection was of 18th-century French furniture and decorative arts, then priced enormously high compared with paintings, by modern standards. He bought a single
Turner in 1800, when the artist was only 25 (
The Fifth Plague of Egypt, £157.10s), in 1828
William Blake's drawings for
Gray's
Elegy, and several works by
Richard Parkes Bonington, but in general he preferred older works. By 1822 Beckford was short of funds and in debt. He put Fonthill Abbey up for sale, for which 72,000 copies of Christie's illustrated catalogue were sold at a guinea apiece; the pre-sale view filled every farmhouse in the neighbourhood with visitors from London. Fonthill, with part of his collection, was sold before the sale for £330,000 to
John Farquhar, who had made a fortune selling gunpowder in India. Farquhar at once
auctioned the art and furnishings in the "Fonthill sale" of 1823, at which Beckford and his son-in-law, the Duke of Hamilton, bought much, often more cheaply than the first price Beckford had paid, as the market was somewhat depressed. What remained of the collection, as maintained and added to at Lansdown Tower, amounting virtually to a second collection, was inherited by the
Dukes of Hamilton. Much of that was dispersed in the "Hamilton Palace sale" of 1882, one of the major sales of the century. The Fonthill sale precipitated
William Hazlitt's scathing review of Beckford's taste for "idle rarities and curiosities or mechanical skill," fine bindings,
bijouterie and highly finished paintings, "the quintessence and rectified spirit of
still-life", republished in Hazlitt's
Sketches of the Picture Galleries of England (1824), and richly demonstrating his own prejudices. Beckford pieces are now in museums all over the world. Hazlitt was unaware that the sale had been salted with lots inserted by Phillips the auctioneer that had never passed Beckford's muster: "I would not disgrace my house by Chinese furniture," he remarked later in life. "
Horace Walpole would not have suffered it in his
toyshop at Strawberry Hill".
Works owned by Beckford Now in the
National Gallery, London: •
Saint Catherine of Alexandria; the National Gallery paid c £6,000 in 1839, as part of a bulk purchase from Beckford. •
Agony in the Garden, bought at the
Joshua Reynolds sale in 1795 for £5, sold with Fonthill and repurchased by Beckford at the Fonthill Sale (as a
Mantegna) for £52.10s. •
Portrait of Doge Leonardo Loredan,
Giovanni Bellini, bought 1807, 13 guineas, sold to NG in 1844 for £630. •
Exhumation of Saint Hubert,
Rogier van der Weyden and workshop, bought by Beckford in 1802 for £96.12s, by NG in 1868 for £1,500. •
Philip IV in Brown and Silver by
Diego Velázquez, bought by NG for £6,300 at the 1882
Hamilton Palace Sale, a very high price for a Spanish painting at the time. •
Tuccia and
Sophonisba,
Andrea Mantegna, £1,785 the pair in 1882 •
Adoration of the Magi,
Filippino Lippi, £1,227 in 1882 • ''The Poulterer's Shop'',
Gerrit Dou •
Circumcision,
Luca Signorelli, £3,150, 1882. •
St Jerome in a Landscape,
Cima da Conegliano •
Virgin and Child with St John,
Perugino. •
Crucifixion Altarpiece Jacopo di Cione or "Style of
Orcagna", the principal
Trecento work in the collection. Now in the
Frick Collection: •
Claude Lorrain,
The Sermon on the Mount, inherited from his father, . •
Gentile Bellini,
Doge Giovanni Mocenigo Other collections: • the "Altieri Claudes", now at
Anglesey Abbey, "The Father of Psyche Sacrificing at the Temple of Apollo", 1663 and "The Landing of Aeneas" painted in 1675. A famous index of taste, as they were auctioned from the estate of the Duke of Kent in 1947 for only £5,300 in 1947 and bought by Lord Fairhaven for Anglesey Abbey, when Beckford had paid £6,825 in 1799, and sold them in £10,500 in 1808 and Philip John Miles paid £12,000 for them in 1813 to hang them at
Leigh Court, making them among the most expensive paintings of the day. • The
Fonthill Vase, a 14th-century Chinese porcelain vase which is the earliest known piece of Chinese porcelain to arrive in Europe, where it was given 14th century metal mounts. Now in the
National Museum of Ireland. • Other works are in the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (
Pesellino Madonna and Child with Six Saints attributed by Beckford to Fra Angelico;
Giovanni Bellini,
Virgin and Child, attributed by Beckford to Cima da Conegliano;
Benjamin West, commemorative portraits of Beckford's grandparents, commissioned in 1797 for Fonthill Abbey, the 13th-century Malmesbury Abbey
Limoges champlevé enamel chasse, a matching
commode and secretaire made by
Jean-Henri Riesener for
Marie Antoinette, and two from the 400-piece
Meissen porcelain table service for the Prince of Orange, ca 1770; the
National Gallery of Art Washington (
Bronzino,
Eleanor of Toledo),
Wallace Collection (
Canaletto &
Corneille de Lyon),
Getty Museum (Gerrit Dou,
Astronomer by Candlelight).
Walters Art Museum (the Byzantine agate Rubens Vase),
Huntington Library and Art Gallery George Romney portrait of Beckford as a young man and his double portrait of Beckford's daughters). • The growing database of
The National Inventory Research Project (NIRP) involving
The National Inventory of Continental European Paintings (NICE or NICEP) lists 20 other works from the collection in various other UK public collections. ==Fonthill Abbey==