Life

Blundell was born at Ince Blundell

Ince Blundell

Ince Blundell is a village and civil parish in the Metropolitan Borough of Sefton on Merseyside, England but historically in Lancashire. It is situated to the north of Liverpool on the A565 road and to the east of the village of Hightown...

, Lancashire

Lancashire

Lancashire is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in the North West of England. It takes its name from the city of Lancaster, and is sometimes known as the County of Lancaster. Although Lancaster is still considered to be the county town, Lancashire County Council is based in Preston...

. A Catholic, like his friend and fellow collector Charles Townley (who encouraged Blundell's collecting and introduced him to Thomas Jenkins

Thomas Jenkins (antiquary)

Thomas Jenkins was a British antiquary and minor painter who went to Rome accompanying the English landscape painter Richard Wilson about 1750 and remained behind, establishing himself in the city by serving as cicerone and sometime banker to the visiting British, becoming a dealer in Roman...

) he was thus barred from the British university system and was educated at the college of the English Jesuits at St Omer

Stonyhurst College

Stonyhurst College is a Roman Catholic independent school, adhering to the Jesuit tradition. It is located on the Stonyhurst Estate near the village of Hurst Green in the Ribble Valley area of Lancashire, England, and occupies a Grade I listed building...

 and the English College at Douai

Douai

-Main sights:Douai's ornate Gothic style belfry was begun in 1380, on the site of an earlier tower. The 80 m high structure includes an impressive carillon, consisting of 62 bells spanning 5 octaves. The originals, some dating from 1391 were removed in 1917 during World War I by the occupying...

. He married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir George Mostyn, bt, of Talacre, Flintshire in 1760 (commissioning her portrait from Joshua Reynolds

Joshua Reynolds

Sir Joshua Reynolds RA FRS FRSA was an influential 18th-century English painter, specialising in portraits and promoting the "Grand Style" in painting which depended on idealization of the imperfect. He was one of the founders and first President of the Royal Academy...

) and had his family estates settled on him by his father in 1761. He also received a fortune from an inheritance from the death of a member of his mother's family without a male heir, further increased by income from his mother's estates and by his wife's and father's death in 1767 and 1773 respectively.

His high income from various sources enabled him to collect classical sculpture and old master paintings (including ones by or after Poussin

Poussin

Poussin refers to:*Charles Jean de la Vallée-Poussin Belgian mathematician*Charles-Louis-Joseph-Xavier de la Vallée-Poussin Belgian geologist and mineralogist, father of Charles Jean*Nicolas Poussin , French painter...

, Ruisdael, Brueghel

Brueghel

Brueghel or Bruegel was the name of several Dutch/Flemish painters from the same family line:* Pieter Bruegel the Elder — The most famous member of the family and the only one to sign his paintings as 'Bruegel' without the H....

, Jacopo Bassano

Jacopo Bassano

Jacopo Bassano , known also as Jacopo dal Ponte, was an Italian painter who was born and died in Bassano del Grappa near Venice, from which he adopted the name.- Life :...

 and Andrea del Sarto

Andrea del Sarto

Andrea del Sarto was an Italian painter from Florence, whose career flourished during the High Renaissance and early Mannerism. Though highly regarded during his lifetime as an artist senza errori , his renown was eclipsed after his death by that of his contemporaries, Leonardo da Vinci,...

, and even a copy of Veronese

Paolo Veronese

Paolo Veronese was an Italian painter of the Renaissance in Venice, famous for paintings such as The Wedding at Cana and The Feast in the House of Levi...

's The Wedding at Cana

The Wedding at Cana

This refers to the work of art of the 16th century.The Wedding at Cana is a massive painting by the late-Renaissance or Mannerist Italian painter, Paolo Veronese. It is on display in the Musée du Louvre in Paris.-History:The painting depicts the Wedding Feast at Cana, a miracle story from the...

, commissioned during a visit to Paris), to improve Ince Blundell Hall and to buy and commission artworks from current artists like Richard Wilson

Richard Wilson (painter)

Richard Wilson was a Welsh landscape painter, and one of the founder members of the Royal Academy in 1768. Wilson has been described as '...the most distinguished painter Wales has ever produced and the first to appreciate the aesthetic possibilities of his country.' He is considered to be the...

, Canova, Gavin Hamilton

Gavin Hamilton (artist)

Gavin Hamilton was a Scottish neoclassical history painterwho is more widely remembered for his hunts for antiquities in the neighborhood of Rome...

 and Anton Raphael Mengs

Anton Raphael Mengs

Anton Raphael Mengs was a German painter, active in Rome, Madrid and Saxony, who became one of the precursors to Neoclassical painting.- Biography :Mengs was born in 1728 at Ústí nad Labem in Bohemia...

. He went on a Grand Tour

Grand Tour

The Grand Tour was the traditional trip of Europe undertaken by mainly upper-class European young men of means. The custom flourished from about 1660 until the advent of large-scale rail transit in the 1840s, and was associated with a standard itinerary. It served as an educational rite of passage...

 to Italy in 1776, visiting Milan

Milan

Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...

, Venice

Venice

Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...

, Ancona

Ancona

Ancona is a city and a seaport in the Marche region, in central Italy, with a population of 101,909 . Ancona is the capital of the province of Ancona and of the region....

, Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

 and Naples

Naples

Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...

. There he made his first classical sculpture purchase via Jenkins (a seated philosopher and eighty pieces from the Villa Mattei

Villa Mattei

The Villa Mattei or Villa Celimontana is a villa on the Caelian Hill in Rome, best known for its gardens. Its grounds cover most of the valley between the Aventine Hill and the Caelian.-Location:...

), though on later visits to Rome he came to mistrust him and relied more on Father John Thorpe. He tended to collect wholesale rather than discriminatingly, as with his group from the Villa Borrioni (probably also in 1777), and also to knowingly purchase modern copies (such as by Giuseppi Angelini

Giuseppi Angelini (sculptor)

Giuseppi Angelini was an 18th century Italian sculptor active in Rome. His notable works include the tomb of Giambattista Piranesi in the church of Sta. Maria del Priorato, as well as a wax model from a funeral urn in the Capitoline Museums produced for Josiah Wedgewood....

 and Carlo Albacini

Carlo Albacini

Carlo Albacini was an Italian sculptor and restorer of Ancient Roman sculpture, a pupil of Bartolomeo Cavaceppi, an eminent sculptor and restorer of Rome...

) and classical works imaginatively restored by dealers such as Bartolomeo Cavaceppi

Bartolomeo Cavaceppi

Bartolomeo Cavaceppi was an Italian sculptor who worked in Rome, where he trained in the studio of the acclimatized Frenchman, Pierre-Étienne Monnot, and then in the workshop of Carlo Antonio Napolioni, a restorer of sculptures for Cardinal Alessandro Albani, who was to become a major patron of...

 and Giovanni Volpato

Giovanni Volpato

Giovanni Volpato was an Italian engraver of the 18th century.He received his first training from his mother, an embroiderer, and then studied under Giovanni Antonio Remondini...

.

Making other trips to Rome in 1782–3, 1786, and 1790, his collecting patterns improved, in 1783 acquiring the high quality Minerva from Palazzo Lante, but the outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars

French Revolutionary Wars

The French Revolutionary Wars were a series of major conflicts, from 1792 until 1802, fought between the French Revolutionary government and several European states...

 put a pause to his collecting and transferred his attention to creating new buildings at Ince Blundell for his collections (though he did buy at the 1800 and 1801 English sales of Lord Cawdor and Lord Bessborough

Frederick Ponsonby, 3rd Earl of Bessborough

Frederick Ponsonby, 3rd Earl of Bessborough was a British peer.Ponsonby was the eldest son of the 2nd Earl of Bessborough and succeeded to his father's titles in 1793...

's collections). He also became the Liverpool Academy of Arts

Liverpool Academy of Arts

The Liverpool Academy of Arts was founded in April 1810 as a regional equivalent of the Royal Academy, London. Two local art collectors, Henry Blundell and William Roscoe were its first Patron and Secretary, the Prince Regent gave his patronage for the next three years, and it was actively...

's first patron on its foundation in 1810 and was active in Liverpool public life (though unable to hold public office, as a Catholic). He died at Ince Blundell.

Source