Connoisseurs and Conmen - by Lewis Ryder (Hardcover)

About the Book

This book examines the art collector and trickster John Hilditch's struggle to become a renowned collector and expert in early twentieth-century Britain. Through his life it explores how cultural authority was constructed, challenged and forged during a period of social, cultural and political democratisation.

Book Synopsis

This book examines John Hilditch (1872-1930), a notorious collector of Chinese art who lied, hoaxed and manipulated in his struggle against museum experts to become a cultural authority. Previously overlooked as a pest with a dubious collection, this book uses Hilditch to interrogate how far the monumental social, cultural and political changes of the early twentieth century unsettled social and cultural hierarchies and how these hierarchies were remade. It shows how the cultural elites were forced to engage with the public and re-draw the boundaries of citizenship, expertise and high and low culture in response to unprecedented social mobility, the democratisation of culture and politics, as well as the effects of British imperialism which brought ordinary Britons access to antiquities as well as confidence to claim expertise over foreign cultures. The book will interest social and cultural historians of Modern Britain, museum scholars and art historians.

From the Back Cover

Connoisseurs and conmen tells the untold story of John Hilditch, a man from an ordinary background who went to extraordinary lengths to become an art collector and connoisseur in early twentieth-century Britain. Born into a provincial working-class family, Hilditch went on to collect over sixty thousand Chinese treasures, many of which he acquired in thrilling escapades in China, or so at least he claimed. Hilditch played hard and fast with the truth in his struggle to become a cultural authority, a struggle that saw him go up against the nation's leading connoisseurs, and which spilled into the pages of papers up and down the country.

This book uses Hilditch's life as a lens through which to examine how cultural authority was constructed, asserted and forged in a period of drastic social, cultural and political change. Hilditch not only allows us to investigate how increased opportunities for social mobility and the democratisation of culture and politics allowed the lower classes to claim a stake in high culture and civic institutions, but in directly confronting the museum authorities he lets us examine how these changes impacted traditional social and cultural hierarchies. Through analysis of Hilditch's challenge to the cultural elites, Connoisseurs and conmen exposes the instability of the cultivated elite's authority, as well as the limits of democratisation.

About the Author

Lewis Ryder is a Lecturer in Modern British History at the University of Manchester