Abstract

Scholarly research on Montreal collectors of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries has, for the most part, focused on their interest in 17tlt century Dutch portraiture and rural scenes, landscapes of The Hague and Barbizon schools and modem British pictures. While this is an entirely acceptable emphasis, given the composition of most collections of the time, there were some Montrealers who stepped outside these interests, collecting and encouraging familiarity with the arts of the European Renaissance. This thesis sets out to examine the presence of Renaissance art within the Montreal cultural milieu by following the activities of collectors such as Sir William Van Home, Richard B. Angus, Robert Wilson Reford, Lord Strathcona, Charles and Elwood Hosmer, and F. Cleveland Morgan. Some were wealthy Scottish-Protestants who set in motion a paradigm for contributing to society through donating their collections to the city's leading art institution, the Art Association of Montreal (later the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts). By situating their activities within this framework of collecting and donating, it is possible to provide a picture of how the Renaissance collection of the Museum came to be. Sadly - though hardly surprisingly - looking at this same trajectory reveals that there were significant works of European art that escaped transmission from collectors' hands to Museum walls, making the collection less envious than it might have otherwise been