Journal of the History of Collections vol. 29 no. 3 (2017) pp. 423–438 © The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. doi:10.1093/jhc/fhw032 Advance Access publication 15 October 2016 The amateur and the public sphere Private collectors in Brussels, Antwerp and Ghent through the eyes of European travellers in the long nineteenth century Ulrike Müller In nineteenth-century Belgium, private collections were visited by an interested local and international public; they formed popular topics in travel literature. Travellers such as Johanna Schopenhauer even characterized Belgium as the ‘country of private collectors’, suggesting that collectors were important actors in the public sphere. How precisely was their position perceived in the Belgian cities, and how was it communicated beyond the country’s borders? Based on the analysis of contemporary travel literature, this article aims to explore the public life of private collectors in the artistic centres of Brussels, Antwerp and Ghent over the course of the nineteenth century. It argues that collectors played a prominent role in urban cultural life especially between 1780 and 1860, while major societal and cultural-political changes – mainly related to the growing importance and shifting function of public museums – resulted in the gradual withdrawal of private collectors from the public sphere later in the century. IN the 1830s, the German historian Johann Wilhelm Loebell noted while travelling through Belgium that Ghent counted ‘no fewer than 47 private persons who are in possession of considerable collections of paint- ings’, and many others who were collectors of engrav- ings, drawings, antiques (comprehending antquities) and coins. 1 The citizens of Antwerp and Brussels were particularly known for their distinct taste for the arts, and the private collections there were often referred to as being ‘too many to cite them all’. 2 In all three cities the collectors were praised for their sociability and erudition, and for their willingness to show their cabinets to travellers. 3 The frequent appearance and the often extensive description of Belgian private art and antiques collec- tors in international travel literature, especially during the irst half of the nineteenth century, suggests that they were important and highly visible igures in the cultural life of their cities. This prominence stands in contrast to the markedly diminishing references to private collections found in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. According to Jürgen Habermas, the extensive par- ticipation of private persons in the urban public sphere emerged during the eighteenth century. 4 The contin- uing economic developments and the emergence of capitalist modes of production resulted in the rise of a new bourgeois middle class that began to articulate a strong sense of its own identity and to actively defend its interests against the state by means of rational-crit- ical debate. Developing irst in the world of letters, this critical public relection initially centred on cul- tural products such as works of literature, theatre and art, which had become available to a broader public due to continuing processes of commodiication. 5 The result was, according to Habermas, a new approach to the arts. The lourishing art and literary criticism and salon culture, societies and reading groups spurred public discussion of cultural matters. The emerging concept of freedom of artistic judgement further- more led to an extension of the traditional circle of amateurs and a considerable growth in the number of private collectors active in Western Europe during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. 6 Despite the increasing popularity of collecting as a social and cultural phenomenon and the broadening social base of the participants active in the urban pub- lic sphere, little research has been conducted on the public role and relevance of private art and antiques collectors in the nineteenth century. Scholars such as Rosemary Sweet, Philippa Levine and Arnaldo Momigliano have identiied the amateur-collector and Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jhc/article-abstract/29/3/423/2329351/The-amateur-and-the-public-sphere-private by guest on 14 October 2017