The conclusion reviews the principle arguments of the book as part of a coda which reflects on how and why the post-revolutionary culture of collecting was redefined in the final decade of the nineteenth century. A combination of new intellectual paradigms, changes in museum funding and the growing weight of the transatlantic market undercut private collectors’ claims to be stewards of French heritage. Yet amidst these changes the conclusion stresses continuities in how the amateur was conceived in tension with the bureaucratic state, and a study of major donations at the close of the nineteenth century- such as that of Eugène Piot- underlines the persistence of aristocratic forms of distinction within the support given to republican institutions. Challenging conventional narratives about the birth of a uniform national heritage, the book concludes by arguing for the resilience of private patrimony outside of state control.

Chapter 1 traces the transformation of the art market across the revolutionary era, drawing on recent scholarship to consider how the French Revolution changed the availability of artworks and the cultural meanings attached to their preservation. These processes are observed through the writings of Pierre-Marie Gault de Saint-Germain, whose manuscripts and publications documented the demise of the old regime of curiosity he knew in his youth. The introduction argues that the eclipse of corporate institutions and the attack on the privileged orders changed the meaning of collecting by opening the title of amateur to much wider social constituency whilst nonetheless retaining the idea that the correct exercise of taste was even more important in the disorderly new circumstances. The chapter traces the emergence of dealers in art and curiosities across post-revolutionary Paris and argues that the revamped category of the amateur was simultaneously dependent upon but hostile to these new commercial forces.

This chapter describes the role of private individuals who aimed to collect the traces of the French Revolution amidst the tumultuous events. It is centred on the figure of Jean-Louis Soulavie, and his unique collection of prints and drawings, now split between the Louvre and regional archives. It discusses how Soulavie acquired and interpreted this corpus of images, drawing connections with his changing political convictions, and the different functions ascribed to the image, including the commemorative (especially for victims of the Terror), the explanatory (seeking to understand the cause-and-effect of revolutionary processes) and the predictive (echoing Soulavie’s belief in the occult power of images). It connects Soulavie’s engagement with visual culture with other aspects of his collecting and considers the dispersal of many cabinets assembled by this first generation of collector-historians during the Restoration.

This chapter is centred on what was widely seen as the sale of the nineteenth century- the 1893 dispersal of the Spitzer collections. Austrian-born Frédéric Spitzer in many ways was the inheritor of the salvage crusade begun in earlier generations, building up a brilliant array of medieval and Renaissance artefacts (including some faked and composite pieces created on his commission). This chapter explores the visibility of Spitzer in French print culture in order to interrogate the claims for private collectors as patriots, and the attempt by the Third Republic to make collectors into auxiliaries of national policy. The scandal surrounding his sale exposes the anxieties about the interplay of private interest and public institutions, the sensitivity about curators like Émile Molinier when they operated in the market, as well as the virulence of anti-Semitic hostility to Jewish dealers. Most pervasive was the wider fear that French heritage was increasingly snapped up and repatriated by foreign buyers, so that the 1893 sale could be alternately depicted as a triumph, a swindle or a defeat for French culture.

The Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune 1870-71 exercised a dramatic impact on the rhetoric around private collecting, this chapter suggests. It examines why conservative collectors such as baron Jérôme Pichon felt that they were personally under attack as the city was shelled and burned during the année terrible, and suggests that heritage became intensely politicised, as radicals were blamed for repeating the vandalism previously seen in the Revolution of 1789. The chapter emphasis the emergence of a belligerent branch of art history written by Pichon’s associations- like Louis Courajod and baron Charles Davillier- and stresses that conservative collectors took their vision of the past into the public sphere through the vibrant culture of temporary exhibitions which emerged under the Second Empire. Through the figure of baron Léopold Double, it explores the cult of the old regime created by royalists but also argues that this cult proved very unstable in the new political and economic circumstances of the 1880s.

This chapter examines the career of Alexandre-Charles Sauvageot, the violinist-turned-collector of French medieval and Renaissance art, who became one of the prime donors to the Louvre in the nineteenth century. It reconstructs his social networks of collectors in the immediate post-revolutionary period and examines how their purchases were identified as a salvage crusade. It points out the ambivalence of Sauvageot’s cabinet as both a domestic space and a semi-public urban attraction and explores the mixed motives that prompted his unprecedented decision to donate his artworks to the Louvre in 1856. To that extent, it explores not only why the Second Empire witnessed a growing convergence between private collectors and state cultural institutions, but also the ongoing tensions created by this new partnership. It traces the fate of Sauvageot’s bequest after his death and suggests why the reputation of his collection was soon overtaken by other developments in the 1860s in the taste for the fine and decorative arts.

The changing market for rare books forms the focus of this chapter, looking at the impact of the French Revolution not just on the dispersed libraries of the old regime, but the emergence of new ways of classifying and consuming historic editions. It identifies the expanded market for rare books from the 1790s: both the resourceful dealers who were able to exploit the demand for works by historic printing houses, and the restless bibliophiles who scavenged across the city on the hunt for rare editions. It reconsiders why this period saw the rise of the so-called bibliomaniac, as well as the growth in new ways to classify rare books (via bibliography) and new forms of bibliophile sociability. Touching on key figures such as Charles Nodier, Guilbert de Pixéricourt, Antoine-Augustin Renouard and Arthur-Marie-Henri Boulard, the chapter argues for a mode of book collecting that was self-consciously anachronistic, seeking to celebrate the pre-revolutionary world of elite learning.

This introduction positions the book in terms of three key concepts for the nineteenth century: collecting; historical consciousness; and the legacies of the French Revolution. In each case it surveys the relevant scholarship and identifies how this project seeks to offer a fresh perspective on how the circulation and recuperation of objects was central in forging new kinds of historical consciousness in the post-revolutionary era. It argues for the enduring endurance of private collectors within the French public sphere, in contrast to the assumptions that their contribution was increasingly marginal. It suggests that the expanding market for antiques was central in allowing new ways of possessing and imagining the past and insists on the need to re-inscribe the role of private donors and collectors within debates about the shaping of a national heritage (le patrimoine). The introduction also justifies the parameters of the project- geographically and chronologically- and briefly sketches the outline of the following chapters.