page_title: Elhanan Bicknell
section_title: Collector
hierarchical_section_title: Elhanan Bicknell / Collector
context_page_description: Elhanan Bicknell was a successful London businessman and shipowner. He used his wealth as a patron of the arts, becoming one of the leading collectors of contemporary British art.
context_section_description: Bicknell occupied a large house at Herne Hill, Surrey, from 1819. In 1828 he began what became a major collection of pictures by contemporary or recent British artists. By 1850, he had collected some of the works of Thomas Gainsborough, J. M. W. Turner and numerous others including David Roberts, Edwin Landseer (such as Doubtful Crumbs), George Clarkson Stanfield, Thomas Webster, William Collins, William Etty and Augustus Wall Callcott. He became personally acquainted with most of the artists, entertained them in his home and paid them well. The house did not have a Long gallery, so Bicknell placed these works, with pieces of sculpture such as Edward Hodges Baily's Eve at the Fountain, throughout the rooms, and opened his house to art connoisseurs. Gustav Friedrich Waagen published a description and listing by room in his Treasures of Art in Great Britain. A visitor who came to see the collection in 1857 said, "It could not have been formed in better taste." This may have been John Ruskin who lived nearby and made regular visits to see the paintings of, "my always kind neighbour."
  Published comments by Ruskin and other art experts made Bicknell's collection well known and may have contributed the high prices it fetched when broken up after his death. A contemporary writing about the high prices paid for fine art in the 1860s said, "the fancy prices quoted are nearly all for pictures from famous collections; and some for the Bicknell pictures, for example, would almost suggest that as much was due to the name of the collector as the merit of the picture."
  Bicknell bought many of Turner's finest works before Ruskin's advocacy brought the artist to public prominence. In 1841 he paid Turner £250 for a painting of gondolas in Venice. That painting, Guidecca, La Donna Della Salute and San Giorgio (1840), changed hands in 2006 for US$35.8 million, setting a new record for a British work of art sold at auction.
caption: Eve at the Fountain by Edward Hodges Baily, was displayed with Elhanan Bicknell's collection
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