ABSTRACT
The Duke of Chandos’s losses in the South Sea Bubble financial disaster affected both his architectural patronage and his ability to buy works of art. He was fortunate, however, to have made most of his important purchases in the years before 1720. The high point of English collecting had occurred in the seventeenth century, with the Royal Collection of Charles I. This was the greatest collection of works of art ever to have been seen in England, much of which was dispersed by Parliament in the ‘sale of the century’ from 1649 to 1653.2 After the Restoration of Charles II in 1660, the Royal Collection did not regain its pre-eminence but was overtaken by the increasing number of collections of works of art, natural curiosities, paintings, books and sculpture established by private individuals and learned societies.3 The most important eighteenth-century collectors included: wealthy, self-made men such as Sir Robert Walpole, 1st Earl of Orford, and the Duke of Chandos; bibliophiles such as Robert and Edward Harley, 1st and 2d Earls of Oxford; scientists Sir Hans Sloane and Dr Richard Mead; aristocrats like Richard Boyle, 3d Earl of Burlington and respected connoisseurs such as Sir Andrew Fountaine (1676/8-1753). These men formed a loose network of collectors who were aware of what each other was buying, emulated each other’s tastes and competed to buy prestigious items.
