{"title":"Ruth Guilding","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"marble-mania-book-ruth-guilding-9780953751273","title":"Marble Mania","description":"This fascinating catalogue documents the English obsession with marble sculpture, during the seventeenth and eighteenth century. The display of classical sculpture was an essential requisite of every grand house in Britain during that period, and shaped the nature of the English country house - Holkham Hall, Kedleston Hall, Syon House, and many other equally famous examples. The master example was the Arundel collection, which itself drew on Italian precedents. There sculpture had been mounted in gardens, and the exedra as a means of display was taken over into English practice. The entrance hall with sculpture was then developed in unique form alongside the long gallery. Also to be considered are crypts and grottos, and study collections in the houses of men like Charles Townley, and indeed John Soane. This fascinating survey by Ruth Guilding gives valuable insight into an essential aspect of English 18th-century taste and culture.  \"...never forget that the most valuable acquisition a man of refined taste can make is a piece of fine Greek sculpture\", as Hamilton wrote to Townley in 1771.\"","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49596027371793,"sku":"GOR008192035","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0953751279.jpg?v=1751013509"},{"product_id":"owning-the-past-book-ruth-guilding-9780300208191","title":"Owning the Past","description":"In a lively re-examination of the British collectors who bankrupted themselves to possess antique marble statues, Owning the Past chronicles a story of pride, rivalry, snobbery, and myopic obsession with posterity and possession. Analyzing the motives that drove “Marble Mania” in England from the 17th through the early 19th century, Ruth Guilding examines how the trend of collecting antique sculpture entrenches the ideals of connoisseurship and taste, exacerbates socioeconomic inequities, and serves nationalist propaganda. Even today, for the individuals or regimes that possess them, classical statuary performs as a symbol of authority or as the trophies of a “civilized” power. From Adolf Hitler posing for the press beside an ancient copy of Myron’s Discobolus to the 2002 sale of the Newby Venus for a record price of about $13 million to the Emir of Qatar, marble mania remains unabated. With insider access to private collections, Guilding writes with verve and searing insight into this absorbing fixation.  Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":50679631675665,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50679632363793,"sku":"GOR014032247","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0300208197.jpg?v=1751390120"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-ruth-guilding.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}