DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61252#0028
Xxiv GENERAL INTRODUCTION.
Buckingham, part was sold in the Netherlands, for the
maintenance of the young duke, some pictures were pawned
to Sir Peter Lely, the rest were confiscated by Parliament.
The next private collection of which we hear anything,
was that of Sir Peter Lely. He had purchased a number
of pictures, drawings, &c., from the widow of Van Dyck.
On the sale of King Charles’s collection, and the disper-
sion of the Duke of Buckingham’s, he obtained others.
His collection might be termed magnificent, for a private
individual; it contained 167 pictures, 26 by Van Dyck,
and many by Titian and Rubens. The original drawings
possessed by Lely were also particularly valuable. Many
of those I have seen in Lawrence’s collection bore Lely’s
mark on them, and must have been part of the plunder of
the cabinets of Charles I. and Arundel. There is a pas-
sage in Roger North’s Life of Lord Guildford, which, for
its quaint and forcible expression, dwells in the memory.
He was an intimate friend of Lely; and after telling us
that he had a whole magazine of original sketches of the
best masters, he adds, “ and drawings, likewise, of divers
finishings, which, had been the heart of great designs and
models.” If Roger North had been a dilettante of the
first water, he could not have expressed better the peculiar
value and sentiment and significance of a genuine drawing.
But to proceed with our chronicle. What had been
taste in Arundel, magnificence in Buckingham, science in
Lely, became in the next century a fashion, subject to the
freaks of vanity, the errors and absurdities of ignorance,
the impositions of pretension and coxcombry. The great
Duke of Marlborough filled Blenheim with pictures—the
fruit of his campaigns—the gifts of cities and princes-
and the Blenheim collection remains to this day one of
the finest in England. Sir Robert Walpole, the minister,
formed a large collection at Houghton; after his death,
purchased by the Empress Catherine, for 30,0007, and
Buckingham, part was sold in the Netherlands, for the
maintenance of the young duke, some pictures were pawned
to Sir Peter Lely, the rest were confiscated by Parliament.
The next private collection of which we hear anything,
was that of Sir Peter Lely. He had purchased a number
of pictures, drawings, &c., from the widow of Van Dyck.
On the sale of King Charles’s collection, and the disper-
sion of the Duke of Buckingham’s, he obtained others.
His collection might be termed magnificent, for a private
individual; it contained 167 pictures, 26 by Van Dyck,
and many by Titian and Rubens. The original drawings
possessed by Lely were also particularly valuable. Many
of those I have seen in Lawrence’s collection bore Lely’s
mark on them, and must have been part of the plunder of
the cabinets of Charles I. and Arundel. There is a pas-
sage in Roger North’s Life of Lord Guildford, which, for
its quaint and forcible expression, dwells in the memory.
He was an intimate friend of Lely; and after telling us
that he had a whole magazine of original sketches of the
best masters, he adds, “ and drawings, likewise, of divers
finishings, which, had been the heart of great designs and
models.” If Roger North had been a dilettante of the
first water, he could not have expressed better the peculiar
value and sentiment and significance of a genuine drawing.
But to proceed with our chronicle. What had been
taste in Arundel, magnificence in Buckingham, science in
Lely, became in the next century a fashion, subject to the
freaks of vanity, the errors and absurdities of ignorance,
the impositions of pretension and coxcombry. The great
Duke of Marlborough filled Blenheim with pictures—the
fruit of his campaigns—the gifts of cities and princes-
and the Blenheim collection remains to this day one of
the finest in England. Sir Robert Walpole, the minister,
formed a large collection at Houghton; after his death,
purchased by the Empress Catherine, for 30,0007, and