ABSTRACT
In the middle decades of the nineteenth century, members of a confident and dynamic middle class came to rival the aristocracy and gentry as patrons of the arts, as they sought to furnish and adorn the rooms of their substantial homes. Often, too, these new patrons began to provide for municipal art galleries and museums, challenging Matthew Arnold’s belief that the emerging business elites of provincial cities like Newcastle and Manchester represented ‘the stout main body of philistinism’. 2 Many of these patrons were captains of industry -Middlesborough ironmasters like Henry Bolckow and Sir Isaac Lowthian Bell, and James Leathart, the Newcastle lead manufacturer. Others were members of the professional and commercial classes, such as Thomas Plint, the Leeds stockbroker who was an admirer of Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelites. In London, members of the Greek merchant community were intimately connected with cultural circles, and used their considerable wealth to patronise artists, architects and interior designers. Prominent amongst them were Alexander Constantine Ionides and his son Alexander (Alecco). Between 1864 and the end of the 1880s, they turned their house, 1 Holland Park, into a veritable showcase of the decorative arts.
