Louis La Caze (1798-1869) might not be a household name, but he was one of the most exceptionally perceptive and generous art collectors of his time. On his death, he left no fewer than 583 paintings to the Louvre, including Frans Hals’s alluring La Bohemienne, Rembrandt’s moody and reflective Bathsheba, Watteau’s unsettlingly monumental portrait of an awkward clown, Gilles, and  a host of other masterpieces. The La Caze bequest remains, by some distance, the single most significant donation in the history of France’s principal museum.

 

La Caze’s achievements as a collector were second only to those of his exact contemporary, the Fourth Marquess of Hertford, whose enormous range of acquisitions – extending beyond painting to the decorative arts, to gold and silverware, to arms and armour and much more besides – still forms the backbone of the magnificent Wallace Collection, at Hertford House in London’s

Manchester Square
. La Caze and the Marquess had much in common, including a pronounced taste for the art of eighteenth-century France, which had fallen out of fashion after the French Revolution and during the years of Napoleonic rule; and between them they played a crucial role in the mid-nineteenth-century revival of interest in a school of art long tainted by association with the decadence and aristocratic aloofness of the ancien regime. So when the authorities at the Louvre decided to put on an exhibition in honour of their great benefactor, La Caze, and were looking for a touring venue in London, it made perfect sense for them to choose the Wallace Collection.

 

“Masterpieces from the Louvre: The Collection of Louis La Caze”, is a considerably smaller version of “La Collection La Caze”, which was originally shown at the Louvre itself between April and July...

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