Beautiful Things

In Fin-de-Siècle Paris, private art collections abounded, and were celebrated and promoted in the lavish sales catalogues of the time as “bouquets”, “symphonies” and “stage sets” among other metaphors and their collectors were praised as “amateurs” or lovers of art. Valerie Mendelson shows that these anti-museological collections brought together arts of many differing periods, including contemporary art, enabling a comparative and conversational viewing that gave artists such as the Impressionists validation and support. This book offers a close and sustained exploration of how these texts and related photographs map the nuances of the amateur as artist with vivid examples drawn from industrial, intellectual and theatrical circles.