This thesis presents a historiographical reinterpretation of the history of The Bowes Museum, an institution that started life as the private collection of John Bowes (1811-1885) and Joséphine Bowes (1825-1874), whose aim was to found a public art museum for the inhabitants of Barnard Castle, County Durham. The investigation places the creation of The Bowes Museum into the context of public museum formation in Britain in the second half of the nineteenth century, and the relationship that art museums held with private collectors and the art market during this period. Through extensive use of the museum’s archive, much of which has remained unexplored, this thesis recasts the history of the Museum to argue that private collections and public museums worked symbiotically, contributing to the evolving discourse of institutional art history. Through this historiographical intervention, it inserts the history of this important museum into a number of disciplines such as institutional histories, collecting histories and the emerging field of art market studies.
Beginning in c.1858, when the Bowes began a structured engagement with the art and antiques market in Paris, this thesis is presented in three sections that track the process of the Bowes’ collection shifting from the private to the public sphere. The first, ‘Forming the Collection’, explores the methods the Bowes used to form their collection in Paris in an increasingly competitive and specialised market for fine and decorative arts. By examining the social and cultural contexts of collectors and museums’ engagement with the art market, the Bowes are brought into dialogue with other contemporary private collectors, antique dealers and museum professionals highlighting their role as actors in the formation of The Bowes Museum. The second section, ‘Housing the Collection’, explores the physical and conceptual creation of The Bowes Museum in the context of the formation of museums in Britain throughout the nineteenth century, focusing in particular on the perceived role of the museum in society. This demonstrates for the first time the Museum’s debt to the political and cultural debates around the role of the museum that took place in Britain from the 1830s onwards.
The final section, ‘Organising the Collection’ explores how the Bowes’ private collection was translated into the space of the public art museum through the mediation of a curator and museum trustees, representing its transformation into a public art institution. The investigation finishes in 1917 when the Museum’s curator and trustees sold off a number of objects from the Museum collection, viewing them as too domestic, personal and unsuitable for a public museum, reinforcing the tensions inherent in the public utility of the applied arts museum and the private gallery of the collector.
