A NOBLE PURSUIT
English Silver from the Rita Gans Collection
at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
by Christopher Hartop
with a preface by Ellenor Alcorn
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Summary
Contents
Authors
Enquiries
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Published by
Virginia Museum
of Fine Arts
in association with
John Adamson
2010
88 pp.
c. 100 illustrations
in colour
11 5/8 × 8 ¹/2 in.
(295 × 215 mm)
ISBN: 978-0-917046-90-2
paperback
US$25.00
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Distributed in UK, Europe, Africa, or the Middle East by: |
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c/o Turpin Distribution
Pegasus Drive
Stratton Business Park
Biggleswade, Bedfordshire SG18 8TQ, UK.
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Distributed in North America by: |
University of Virginia Press:
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Amassed over a period of some forty years, the Gans Collection is one the glories of the
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and one of the leading silver collections in the United States. Work by such celebrated masters as
Paul de Lamerie; Paul Storr; and Robert Garrard is well represented. Besides presenting a survey of the history of silver
collecting, this book also includes a catalogue of the new additions made to the collection, now to be seen in a
ground-breaking new gallery at the museum. Leading experts Christopher Hartop and Ellenor Alcorn present a veritable feast
of silver splendor.
In 2007 Rita Gans generously gave the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts an outstanding array of English silver from the collection
she and her late husband Jerome had amassed over some thirty years. Thanks to the munificent gift in 2010 of more stunning
silver collected by her during the past decade, the museum has become home to one of the most important collections of English
silver in the world. Using examples from the Gans Collection, this book looks closely at the time-honored pursuit of the
beautiful and rare in silver and charts the rise of antique silver collecting in Europe and America
during the past three centuries. Many motives lie behind silver collecting, but more than an object’s beauty, scarcity,
provenance or historical significance, the main driving force is undoubtedly the thrill of the chase.
Profusely illustrated throughout, this book serves as a companion volume to A Noble Feast: English Silver from the Jerome
and Rita Gans Collection in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, by the same authors, published in 2007, and features a complete
catalogue of the new gift comprising fifty further examples of important silver.
‘This wide-ranging exploration of the Rita Gans collection of silver provides a superb overview of the connoisseurship of
18th-century silver ... The book is beautifully produced ... The highly detailed index is also of merit.’
Martin Chasin, Apollo, May 2011
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Director’s Foreword
Acknowledgements
Preface by Ellenor Alcorn
I ACQUISITION AND USE
Interlude One
WIlliam Beckford, 1760-1844
The Pursuit of Perfection
Interlude Two
Royal Patronage
George IV and William IV
II COLLECTING AND CONNOISSEURSHIP
CATALOGUE OF THE RITA GANS COLLECTION
Bibliography
Exhibitions
Index
Photographic Credits
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Christopher Hartop is also the author of the companion volume to this book, A Noble Feast: English Silver from the Jerome and
Rita Gans Collection in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. His numerous books on silver include The Huguenot Legacy: English
Silver 1680–1760 (1996), British and Irish Silver in the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University (2007) and, most recently, The
Classical Ideal: English Silver, 1760–1840 (2010). He contributed to Rococo Silver in England and Its Colonies: Papers from
a Symposium at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, in 2004 (2006). From 1984 to 1999 he worked for Christie’s, New York,
where he was head of the silver department and later Executive Vice-President in charge of the curatorial departments. He is a
Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths and current Chairman of the Silver Society, London.
christopherhartop.com
Ellenor Alcorn is Associate Curator of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Between
2003 and 2010 she was consulting curator for the Jerome and Rita Gans Collection of English Silver at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.
She is preparing a catalogue of the British silver in the Toledo Museum of Art. For twenty years she was a curator in the Department of
European Decorative Arts and Sculpture at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She is the author of English Silver in the Museum of Fine
Arts, Boston (vol. 1, 1993 and vol. 2, 2000) and Beyond the Maker’s Mark: Paul de Lamerie Silver in the Cahn Collection (2006).
She also contributed to Rococo Silver in England and Its Colonies: Papers from a Symposium at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts,
Richmond, in 2004 (2006).
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