Collecting An Empire

Abstract

This essay uses Anglo-Irish writer Catherine Wilmot's travel journal An Irish Peer on the Continent of 1801–3 to examine the relationship between collecting and empire in the Napoleonic period. Wilmot's journal shows how the Louvre museum, a collection of art objects taken from conquered countries, functions as a large-scale cabinet of curiosities that enabled Napoleon to legitimate his empire. She constructs a literary cabinet in her journal that allows her to take part in the practice of collecting and critique Napoleon's method of imperial acquisition. She further supports British collectors who use their cabinets to compete for control of the Continent and to protect Ireland from French imperialism. Her literary cabinet also critiques England's imperial collecting of her own country and repositions Irish collecting as central to Britain's success against France. Wilmot's account contributes to a wider understanding of curiosity by employing the cabinet for subversive rather than imperial ends.

Keywords:

• Catherine Wilmot
• Napoleon
• Louvre
• cabinet of curiosities
• collecting
• imperialism

Notes

1. Catherine Wilmot was born to an English father and an Irish mother. Her father, Captain Edward Wilmot, was a retired army officer, and his status as a port surveyor and landowner made him prominent in local society. Stephen Moore, 2nd Earl Mount Cashell, was a fellow landowner and member of the Irish House of Commons; his wife, Margaret King, was an aristocrat known for her republican sympathies. Catherine Wilmot was the oldest of six daughters; she also had three brothers, including Robert Wilmot. Her only other known writing consists of a series of letters composed during a visit to her sister Martha Wilmot in Russia in 1805, which were published alongside Martha's collection of letters and journal entries in The Russian Journals. In 1820, Catherine Wilmot developed asthma and moved to France to alleviate her symptoms; she died there in 1824. For further biographical information about Wilmot, see the introductions to Thomas Sadleir's and Elizabeth Mavor's editions of her work.

2. All references to Wilmot's text are from Sadleir's edition of her work.

3. See Arthur MacGregor for more on the history and acquisition of the Venus de Medici and the Apollo Belvedere statues.

4. Maria Cosway worked in both France and Italy, but her audience was primarily British as her paintings and engravings were exhibited in London. Sadleir indicates that her father was believed to be Irish, which may have heightened Wilmot's interest in her.

5. As the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Lord Elgin believed that the marbles should be removed to England for safekeeping from Turkish forces attacking Greece as well as from Napoleon. Disliked by the Turks and fearing Britain's acquisition of the marbles, Napoleon tried to prevent Elgin from taking them by having him arrested. See William St. Clair for more on the marbles.

6. John Leslie Foster was a member of the British Parliament. Augustus Foster was a British diplomat and politician, serving in continental Europe and the United States.

7. Copies of Wilmot's journal were placed in the library of the Royal Irish Academy, where they still exist today.