The Purchase of the Past
Collecting Culture in Post-Revolutionary Paris c.1790-1890
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14 327 Ft
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Estimated delivery time: In stock at the publisher, but not at Prospero's office. Delivery time approx. 3-5 weeks.
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Product details:
- Publisher Cambridge University Press
- Date of Publication 18 December 2025
- ISBN 9781108748636
- Binding Paperback
- No. of pages374 pages
- Size 229x152x20 mm
- Weight 540 g
- Language English
- Illustrations 30 b/w illus. 696
Categories
Short description:
Offers a broad and vivid overview of the culture of collecting in France over the long nineteenth-century.
MoreLong description:
Offering a broad and vivid survey of the culture of collecting from the French Revolution to the Belle &&&201;poque, The Purchase of the Past explores how material things became a central means of accessing and imagining the past in nineteenth-century France. By subverting the monarchical establishment, the French Revolution not only heralded the dawn of the museum age, it also threw an unprecedented quantity of artworks into commercial circulation, allowing private individuals to pose as custodians and saviours of the endangered cultural inheritance. Through their common itineraries, erudition and sociability, an early generation of scavengers established their own form of 'private patrimony', independent from state control. Over a century of Parisian history, Tom Stammers explores collectors' investments - not just financial but also emotional and imaginative - in historical artefacts, as well as their uncomfortable relationship with public institutions. In so doing, he argues that private collections were a critical site for salvaging and interpreting the past in a post-revolutionary society, accelerating but also complicating the development of a shared national heritage.
'Creatively conceptualized, deeply researched, and elegantly written, The Purchase of the Past provides an original and convincing account of the crucial role of material culture and private collecting in negotiating the past and constructing historical narratives in nineteenth-century France. Beautifully-wrought case studies of the 'private patrimonies' assembled by individual collectors detail how the practices and meanings of collecting changed in this period.' Leora Auslander, University of Chicago
Table of Contents:
Introduction. Collection, recollection, revolution; 1. Amateurs and the art market in transition (c.1780-1830); 2. Archiving and envisioning the French Revolution (c.1780-1830); 3. Book-hunting, bibliophilia and a textual restoration (c.1790-1840); 4. Salvaging the gothic in private and public spaces (c.1820-70); 5. Royalists versus vandals, and the cult of the old regime (c.1860-1880); 6. Allies of the Republic? Inside the sale of the century (c.1870-1895); Conclusion. The resilience and eclipse of curiosit&&&233;.
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