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In 1806, the wealthy merchant Alexander Davison commissioned eight leading artists to produce paintings depicting scenes from British history to hang in the dining room of his London townhouse in St James’s Square. Many of these pictures are now lost but a record of the gallery is preserved in the patron’s Descriptive Catalogue, which is presented here as a digital facsimile. Davison’s project represents a rare example of a private individual investing heavily in history painting at a time when the dearth of patronage for the genre in Britain preoccupied artists and critics, prompting widespread debate over who could and should support the production of historical pictures. This article explores Davison’s activities in the light of these concerns. It argues that the gallery was designed to serve an ambitious private agenda as the merchant–a prosperous parvenu and convicted fraudster–sought to secure entry into upper-class society and to escape the taint of scandal. Deploying a traditionally public genre for private gain, Davison’s project invites us to consider the opportunities, as well as the problems, associated with patronizing history painting in early nineteenthcentury Britain.

'The Snob’s Chaldron': Alexander Davison and the Private Patronage of History Painting in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain