ABSTRACT
This chapter describes a last series of conclusions may be derived from the 1885 Burlington Club Catalogue, concerning the sociology of collecting. The entries in the Burlington catalogue are too vague alas for any of these carpets or fabrics to be identified today, but it is clear that Bacon stood in a category of his own. Charles Brinsley Marlay, a member of the Burlington Club, possessed large estates in Ireland, partly inherited from his cousin Brinsley Butler, fourth Earl of Lanesborough, and from his grandmother the daughter of Robert Rochford, first Earl of Belvedere. The best known of those artists was William Holman Hunt, also a lender at the 1885 Burlington exhibition, albeit with a much smaller collection than Leighton: nine items only, most of them brass objects. The picture that emerges from Frederic Leighton’s letters and wide network of contacts is that of Western artists busily scouring the fields of ruins of the Levant.
