Catalogue of Pictures and Other Objects of Art: Selected from the Collections of Mr. Robert Holford (1808 1892) Mainly from Westonbirt in Gloucestersh, Club Burlington Fine Arts

The original members included inheritors of treasures at Hamilton Palace, Bowood, Deepdene, Panshanger and other houses full of Splendid English portraits hanging harmoniously with heirlooms from great collectors in the seventeenth century, when it was part of a liberal education to set forth from England on the grand tour and return with spoil from Italy and France. Others, again, gifted with equally fine taste, such as Sir Robert Peel, the English Rothschilds, Mr. Thomas Baring, Mr. Gambier Parry, Mr. Ruskin and Mr. Holford, were forming collections for themselves, taking advantage of the opportunities afforded during the first half of the nineteenth century by the Napoleonic Wars and the Revolutionary vicissitudes of 1848. All agreed in wanting a common meeting-place to compare their treasures.

This difficulty was solved by the formation of the Club. Permission was Obtained, through Sir Henry Cole, then Secretary of the Science and Art Department, from Lord Granville, Lord President of the Council, with the approval of Mr. Gladstone, for evening receptions at Marlborough House where the Science and Art Department was domiciled from 1852 to 1857.

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