ABSTRACT
In some ways Samuel Bancroft Jr. was a typical turn-of-the-century American art collector, but in other ways he was quite unique. Bancroft was an outsider in the family business. While his elder brother William was in charge of production, Samuel preferred studying, selling, and when appropriate, purchasing new manufacturing processes. For example, in Manchester in 1885 he became acquainted with new machinery for bleaching cotton developed by the English engineer William Mather. In 1880 Bancroft saw his first Pre-Raphaelite picture, Dante Gabriel Rossetti's A Vision of Fiammetta , in the home of his Manchester friend William Turner and fell in love with it - 'shocked with delight' was the way he put it. The model was Marie Spartali Stillman of whom he would later become a patron, friend and host. On the spot he determined to collect Rossetti's work as soon as he could afford to do so.
