1. A catalogue raisonné of Stirling Maxwell’s Spanish pictures

Coordinator: Hilary Macartney CEEH (Glasgow)

The project will provide the first detailed catalogue of the collection of Spanish paintings formed by Sir William Stirling Maxwell. The collection was the largest and most comprehensive ever formed of this school in Britain, and was closely linked to his role as a pioneering historian of Spanish art and author of the Annals of the Artists of Spain (1848). Artists represented in it included (in alphabetical order) Antolínez, Arellano, Cajés, Cano, Carducho, Carreño, Juan del Castillo, Goya, El Greco, Herrera the Younger, Mazo, Morales, Murillo, Sánchez Coello, Tristán, Valdés Leal, Vargas, and Zurbarán. The majority of the pictures were purchased at the remarkable series of sales of Spanish art which occurred in the late 1840s and early 1850s, including the sale of Louis Philippe’s Galerie Espagnole at Christie’s in London in May 1853. During Stirling’s lifetime, his collection was displayed at his family seat, Keir House, Perthshire (Scotland) and in his house in Mayfair, London. After his death, his collection was divided between his two sons. His elder son, Sir John Stirling Maxwell, took his share to Pollok House, Glasgow, which now belongs to Glasgow Museums, and where the collection is on public display. The rest of the collection was dispersed in auctions and private sales during the second half of the 20th century. The collection has never been fully catalogued until now.

The catalogue will document as fully as possible all the Spanish paintings (numbering approximately 130) collected by Stirling, providing information on current and past attributions, provenance and the condition of the works. It will also contain introductory material on the context of 19th-century British collecting of Spanish art generally, and on the relationship of Stirling’s collecting of Spanish painting to his writings on Spanish art and the history of the Spanish Habsburgs, as well as to the other areas of his collecting.