The Harold Samuel Collection: A Guide to the Dutch and Flemish Pictures at the Mansion House - Softcover

Hall, Michael; Gifford, Clare

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1907372415 ISBN 13: 9781907372414

Publisher: Paul Holberton Publishing, 2013

The Harold Samuel Collection is a unique collection of 17th-century paintings from Holland's Golden Age. Bequeathed to the City of London in 1987 by Sir Harold Samuel of Wych Cross (1912 to 1987), a wealthy property developer and philanthropist, this remarkable collection of 84 works the finest collection of Dutch and Flemish art assembled privately in the UK in the last hundred years enriches the splendour of the interior of the Mansion House, residence of the Lord Mayor of London. This book marks the 25th anniversary of the bequest. This publication, introduced by an essay of the Collection and the history of artistic taste in relation to Dutch art, has lively and insightful entries accompanying beautiful reproductions of each painting. The Merry Lute Player by Frans Hals is perhaps the best known picture in the Collection, the first painting to be bought via a transatlantic telephone bid, but Samuel also gathered outstanding examples of genre painting, indeed several of the finest workds in existence by Nicolaes Maes, Jacob Ochtervelt, Adriaen van Ostade and Jan Steen. Proceeds from the sale of the book will go towards the Lord Mayor's Appeal which primarily supports the City Music Foundation, and the Harold Samuel Collection Fund, recently set up for the conservation and maintenance of the paintings.

Review:

This lively guide by former Apollo editor Michael Hall marks the 25th anniversary of Lord Samuel of Wych Cross s bequest, a gift of 84 Dutch and Flemish pictures to the City of London. As well as detailing the origins of the collection, which is on display at the Mansion House, it outlines the research that has resulted in several high-profile reattributions. --Apollo magazine, 21 December 2012

Listed under "Alleviating the January Gloom: Exciting exhibitions will cheer art lovers after the festivities end, and a fine selection of new publications will fill the long dark evenings" --Country Life, 26 December 2012

About the Author:

Michael Hall gained his PhD, on collecting Old Master paintings in the nineteenth century, from the Courtauld Institute of Art in 2005. For the past twenty-five years he has been curator of the Rothschild family collections at Exbury in Hampshire. He has been a Visiting Scholar at the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, and was J. Clawson Mills Fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. He has catalogued the collection of gold boxes at the Huntington Art Gallery in San Marino, California, and writes on French decorative arts and on collecting Old Master patintings.

• Publisher: Paul Holberton Publishing
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1907372415
• ISBN 13: 9781907372414
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 200