CATHOLIC COLLECTING AND PATRONAGE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND | Houses, Gardens, Collections with Matthew Martin

Barred from active participation in the public life of the nation, many great English Catholic families in the 18th century turned to patronage and collecting as a means of accumulating social prestige. This lecture will examine the collecting and patronage of two lesser known Catholic families, the Lords Clifford of Chudleigh and the Throckmortons of Coughton Court. The art and architectural patronage of these families and the collections they accumulated are revealed as reflecting a cultural identity that was at once English and loyal to ancestral religion.

Dr Matthew Martin is Assistant Curator in the Department of International Decorative Arts and Antiquities in the National Gallery of Victoria. He is also a Research Associate in the Melbourne College of Divinity. Martin has degrees in Art History, Archaeology and Semitic Linguistics. He has published on a wide range of topics related to the decorative arts and has lectured in the same field in the United States and the United Kingdom, as well as here in Australia.

Nicolas de Largillière (1656 - 1746), portrait of Frances Woollascott, an Augustinian Nun, 1729, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide