Old masters and aspirations : the Randlords, art and South Africa
type: CreativeWork
description: In the last three decades of the nineteenth century, a small group of capitalists, many of whom were from middle-class German-Jewish backgrounds, made vast fortunes from exploiting deposits of gold and diamonds in South Africa, using local labour. These mining magnates accumulated their wealth first in Kimberley in the 1870s and, later, in Johannesburg in the late 1880s. Thereafter, most of them moved to Britain, where they lived for the rest of their lives. By the mid-1890s, as their aspirations became increasingly pronounced, the term 'Randlords' was coined in the London press to describe them. In this study, I have used this collective term in reference to the men who took part in the rough-and-tumble scramble for gold and diamonds before adopting an upper class lifestyle in Britain. Critical discussion of almost all the Randlord collections is hampered by the scarcity of primary material relating to the formation of their collections and, in some cases, even to what was in them. A point of departure for this thesis therefore was to reconstruct an inventory for each of the collections. These inventories (which are included as appendices) list each painting in the collection, possible changes in its attribution (where this is known), its title, its provenance (from whom and when the painting was purchased, and at what price), the present-day whereabouts of the painting (where this is known), and, wherever possible, an appropriate reference to the painting in a catalogue raisonne or sale catalogue or, in the absence of the latter, in the art historical literature The thesis is primarily concerned with the manner in which the identities of the Randlords were shaped and redefined through the acquisition of works of art and other material goods. It demonstrates that their eventual efforts to construct new upper-class identities were strenuous and pronounced. An integral component of this strategy to assert their social position was to participate in the accumulation a…
abstract: In the last three decades of the nineteenth century, a small group of capitalists, many of whom were from middle-class German-Jewish backgrounds, made vast fortunes from exploiting deposits of gold and diamonds in South Africa, using local labour. These mining magnates accumulated their wealth first in Kimberley in the 1870s and, later, in Johannesburg in the late 1880s. Thereafter, most of them moved to Britain, where they lived for the rest of their lives. By the mid-1890s, as their aspirations became increasingly pronounced, the term 'Randlords' was coined in the London press to describe them. In this study, I have used this collective term in reference to the men who took part in the rough-and-tumble scramble for gold and diamonds before adopting an upper class lifestyle in Britain. Critical discussion of almost all the Randlord collections is hampered by the scarcity of primary material relating to the formation of their collections and, in some cases, even to what was in them. A point of departure for this thesis therefore was to reconstruct an inventory for each of the collections. These inventories (which are included as appendices) list each painting in the collection, possible changes in its attribution (where this is known), its title, its provenance (from whom and when the painting was purchased, and at what price), the present-day whereabouts of the painting (where this is known), and, wherever possible, an appropriate reference to the painting in a catalogue raisonne or sale catalogue or, in the absence of the latter, in the art historical literature The thesis is primarily concerned with the manner in which the identities of the Randlords were shaped and redefined through the acquisition of works of art and other material goods. It demonstrates that their eventual efforts to construct new upper-class identities were strenuous and pronounced. An integral component of this strategy to assert their social position was to participate in the accumulation a…
author: Stevenson, Michael
language: eng
date published: 1997
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:22:47Z
provider: University of Cape Town
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Michaelis School of Fine Art

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/11427/20200