From the March 2025 issue of Apollo. Preview and subscribe here.
Kate de Rothschild landed on her feet at the age of 21. She had recently graduated from the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, and even more recently married; then her new husband, Marcus Agius, won a place at Harvard Business School, and they moved to Massachusetts. Realising she was going to be left largely to her own devices, she turned up on the doorstep of the university’s Fogg Museum of Art, armed with a letter of introduction to its eminent curator of drawings, Agnes Mongan, and enquired whether she might have a job. ‘It suited the museum to have an intern for nine months whom they could just pay peanuts, and I was given a visa so that I could help support Marcus through business school – the peanuts helped a teeny bit,’ De Rothschild says. ‘It was wonderful! […] I was allowed to work 32 hours a week – although I stayed longer – and worked for Eunice Williams, then the assistant curator, under Agnes Mongan. Can you imagine two more wonderful people to work with?’
It was the launch of a lifelong love affair with Old Master drawings that has encompassed museum, auction house, dealing and – for the last two decades – collecting. ‘I always knew I wanted to do something in the art world, but I did not have any great idea of what that might be, in the way that one might nowadays,’ De Rothschild remarks as we sit around a blazing drawing-room fire on what seems like the coldest day of the year. ‘This was fifty-something years ago – women weren’t encouraged to think about a career.’ It was challenging enough to have one. When, for instance, Mongan was first promoted at the Fogg in 1937, the new position of keeper of drawings was created for her because women were not allowed to be curators – that finally changed in 1947. Mongan also became only the second woman to run a major art museum in the United States, when she was named director of the Fogg in 1969. Perhaps it is due to her that the field of Old Master drawings, unlike Old Master paintings and most other disciplines, has long been dominated by women – as curators, dealers and, more recently, as major collectors.
Kate de Rothschild’s journey with drawings began humbly enough, but it offered opportunity to a young person with a keen eye and a keen ear. ‘In the drawings department at the Fogg, we used to do tiny exhibitions in a tiny gallery space – this was long before the museum was transformed,’ she explains. ‘I helped with the catalogues and with the visiting scholars who came through. My job was to pull out the drawings they wanted to see and gently hover and listen to what was said.’ That ‘wonderful introduction’ to the world of works on paper continued after she returned to London and worked as a volunteer assistant – unpaid this time – under the exacting and watchful eye of Julien Stock, whom she credits as her mentor, in the Old Master Drawings department at Sotheby’s. Philip Pouncey, a former Deputy Keeper of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum and one of the greatest of all connoisseurs of Italian drawings, was also there at the time. ‘That was a real learning curve,’ she says. One could hardly doubt it – or hope for a better education.
Monastery of Agios Pavlos, Mount Athos (1856), Edward Lear
It was Stock who, knowing she wanted to have children, suggested that she consider dealing rather than taking a job with an auction house or gallery. ‘Of course, it is not the sort of thing one can say any more, but it was wonderful advice. It is perfectly easy to work from home as a drawings dealer – it is rather harder with paintings. I had solander boxes made in small, medium and large, and started from there.’ It sounds so simple in theory. Her first show was staged in 1974 in William Darby’s then first-floor gallery, next to Sotheby’s on Bond Street. During her 35 years in business, De Rothschild never had a gallery but staged shows most years, often sharing spaces with another London-based colleague, Yvonne Tan Bunzl. ‘Mostly, I would be home by teatime when the girls came back from school. Then everything stopped.’
There was – and still is – no acquisitions policy as such. ‘I was always very scattergun. Robert Salisbury once memorably described himself as an undisciplined springer spaniel, and I am an undisciplined cockapoo when it comes to buying drawings. It was the same when I began collecting.’ She continues: ‘George Abrams, for example, was a very focused collector [largely of 17th-century Dutch drawings] but you can’t be that any more. There is just not enough of a supply.’ For her, the period, school, medium or subject of a drawing is immaterial. Only quality counted – and a drawing’s particular appeal. The one constant rule was that each purchase had to be a coup de foudre. ‘A drawing has to move me,’ she says emphatically. ‘I rationalise the purchase later. I can honestly say that even as a dealer, I never bought a drawing I did not love at first sight and want to own myself, but I never held anything back because you are only as good as the next drawing you buy. Then, of course, I was anguished when I sold it, but as long as it went to a good home, I was happy.’ Those good homes included the Art Institute of Chicago, the British Museum and the Morgan Library in New York.
Kate de Rothschild photographed at her home in London in January 2025. Photo: © Sarah Weal
Dealer turned collector around 2007. ‘The break came naturally. Two things happened. Marcus became chairman of Barclays Bank. I knew I would be travelling around the world with him, and asked the Barclays people to make use of me as I was determined not to be an appendage. While he had his meetings, I visited the philanthropic projects that the bank supported. It was fascinating. Then Neil MacGregor asked if I would become chairman of the patrons of the British Museum, and I wanted to give that a proper go. I realised I could not do all three.’ Gradually she began selling some of her less important stock at auction, with her husband agreeing that she could use the funds to buy drawings for themselves. ‘That happened, and then the money ran out, and I said it would be a pity not to continue.’ Always granted the right of refusal, Agius has become increasingly involved in acquisitions.
Most of the European ‘schools’ or countries are represented in their collection, although the lion’s share is divided – like Kate’s heart – between the Italian and French. Neither is surprising, given the predilections of Messrs Pouncey and Stock and her family heritage. She grew up surrounded by works of art reflecting the traditional goût Rothschild – 18th-century ormolu-mounted French furniture, Sèvres porcelain and lush flowerpieces by the likes of Jan van Huysum. There were, however, no Old Master drawings. ‘I think one of the reasons why Rothschilds traditionally did not collect them – although Waddesdon does have a good collection of decorative 18th-century French drawings – is that they did not want religious images. I bought whatever I thought a good drawing.’ Indeed, one of her most beautiful drawings is the delicate pen-and-brown-ink Judith with the Head of Holofernes by Guercino, a biblical subject probably related to a lost painting dated to 1638.
Rothschild taste is, however, reflected in what she describes as her ‘maximalist’ hang. Every dimly lit nook, cranny, wall and table bears a drawing, watercolour or gouache, usually with mounts of varying shades of mid blue. Oil sketches on paper, which she quite reasonably counts as drawings, are allowed greater prominence. Behind where I sit, for instance, hangs a plein air oil sketch on paper laid down on board of around 1840 by the relatively little-known Swiss landscape painter Alexandre Calame. A carefully observed study of a foaming torrent rushing through strikingly striated boulders, it is a perfect example of her buying an image rather than a name. It also reflects her feeling for more fully worked images. ‘I respond to more finished drawings far more than the very, very sketchy,’ she admitted.
Judith with the Head of Holofernes (c. 1638), Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, called Il Guercino
Her first acquisition as a collector was certainly fully resolved and of what she terms as the ‘proper’ Hubert Robert size. This atmospheric capriccio of classical ruins set in a wooded landscape sees the artist exploiting the full tonal range and subtlety of soft red chalk. Probably executed after the artist’s return to Paris from Rome in 1765, the partially ruined circular temple offers a composite of structures from Hadrian’s Villa in Tivoli and Rome but appears to set it with a tree drawn from nature, its bare roots, contorted trunk and dying branches perhaps suggesting an analogy with the fate of the temple. A very fresh Canaletto pen-and-ink drawing of the 1740s presents another veduta ideata.
The eclecticism of the collection soon becomes apparent in compelling displays that spread across walls regardless of medium, period, subject or school. Without doubt, the earliest sheet is a tiny – 6.8 × 5.4cm – and fragmentary profile head of a young man in a hat drawn in black chalk, pen and brown ink and brown wash by the 15th-century Florentine goldsmith, niellist, draughtsman and engraver Maso Finiguerra. Its previous owner, Robert Landolt, loved it so much that he carried it with him when he travelled. ‘I must admit, I have never done it – but I love the idea,’ De Rothschild confides. Is provenance important? ‘The thought that this little drawing may have been in the Medici collections certainly gave me a frisson! A drawing having no known provenance wouldn’t stop me buying it, but a good provenance is a wonderful added bonus. I love seeing the collectors’ marks because they tell such a story.’ She adds: ‘I also like knowing if a drawing has been exhibited or published. And I always prefer to know where a drawing was between 1939 and 1945.’
If there is a unifying quality, it is an irresistible charm. Who could fail to respond to the abject boredom experienced by Édouard Boilly, the son of Louis-Léopold Boilly, who evidently made the boy sit for his portrait for far longer than he cared to? One can almost hear his petulant voice saying the equivalent of ‘How much longer?’ A highly finished black-chalk drawing with white heightening on delectable rose-tinted paper, it was a preparatory study for a portrait exhibited at the Salon in 1808. It is tempting to presume that the deeply sleeping child whose head is depicted in a red-chalk study was also the progeny of an artist – very possibly Ludovico Carracci – given the tenderness of the artist’s gaze.
Study of a Seated Dog (1632–34), Simon Vouet
During her years as a dealer, De Rothschild’s catalogues usually included a faithful family hound or two – and even, most memorably, a watercolour of the famous giraffe Zarafa, given to Charles X of France by the Ottoman governor of Egypt in 1826. A serious contender for the canine prize is Thomas Gainsborough’s bravura sketch of his evidently much-loved Tristram and Fox – an image lithographed in 1827. But the winner, by a hair’s breadth, is Study of a Seated Dog by Simon Vouet. Both the Vouet and the Gainsborough are in black chalk with white heightening, the latter also bearing touches of rose-pink. The Vouet was included in a folio of pastel drawings of courtiers commissioned from the artist by Louis XIII – the only dog included in the series. A decidedly unaristocratic mixed breed, his gaze appears to be fixed on his adored owner. This was one of the few instances where the collector was prepared to take a gamble that a drawing would clean. ‘I only work with extremely careful conservators who share my belief that one can try to take out foxing or stains but never add anything or re-draw,’ she explains. ‘I will reject a drawing if it is too damaged and I feel I can’t live with it in such a condition.’
While the collector has many sheets by the artist Adolph von Menzel there is one that may not be the most important but it is the most endearing. A thank-you letter featuring a cat holding a plate inserted with a real silver thaler coin, it was sent in 1877 to repay the banker H. Goldschmidt, who had found the artist with empty pockets and unable to pay for his phaeton ride. A little wren’s nest with a feather by the contemporary artist Brigid Edwards she describes as ‘frivolous but very beautiful’.
To begin with, the collection was confined to drawings from 1500 to 1800; over the years, it has crept into the 19th century. Space has been found for delectable still-life watercolours by Léon Bonvin and the dreamy A Shepherdess and her Flock as Nightfall Approaches by Jean-François Millet – a highly finished and signed work executed in black chalk, pastel and watercolour. There is a spare, linear harbour scene by the Danish Golden Age artist Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg and a study of coarse peasant draperies by the German Franz Xaver Winterhalter, testimony to the growing strength of the Northern schools. The old demarcation between Old Master drawings and English watercolours has also been breached by the likes of a rapidly drawn Turner of Dumbarton Rock, Scotland, from the early 1820s, one of his so-called ‘colour beginnings’, and Edward Lear’s Monastery of Agios Pavlos, Mount Athos, which hangs happily above a Dale Chihuly glass piece. In this pencil, ink and watercolour drawing, Lear gives himself extensive colour notes, as well as inscribing the date, ‘9.10. Sept. 1856’ and, in Greek, the words ‘Saint Paul’.
Dumbarton Rock, West Scotland (early 1820s), J.M.W. Turner
Not all artists were so obliging. ‘I bought a tiny Guardi – absolutely heavenly – of half a clock and doorcase, and it irritated me for a long time because I could not work out what it represented.’ This sliver of a pen and ink and wash drawing was too specific to be imaginary. Ketty Gottardo, senior curator of drawings at the Courtauld and a Venetian, promised to have a think after she saw the collection. Shortly after, she sent a photograph of the left transept of the Basilica dei Santi Giovanni e Paolo with the monumental clock over the door of the Chapel of the Rosary. It is a perfect example of the arguably uniquely collegiate character of the world of drawings. ‘It is a small world, and we almost all know each other. I have made lasting friends with dealers, collectors, curators and scholars, and my life has been hugely enriched by being part of it.’
As with every collector, there are things that have got away and things never to be found or afforded. Her rare panorama by the 17th-century artist Philips Koninck, for instance, is ‘the closest thing I shall ever get to a Rembrandt landscape’. There are also sheets that she longs to reclaim. ‘I had the most wonderful François Boucher drawing in the world!’, she laments at one point, citing the malevolent-looking triton holding a conch shell drawn in black and white chalks, a study for The Rising of the Sun (1753), that has joined the painting in the Wallace Collection. ‘I would do anything to get that back!’ In the meantime, while on the lookout for the right drawing by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, she is cataloguing the 200 or so works on paper currently in the collection in time for her husband’s 80th birthday in 2026. Fortunately, she never tires of looking at drawings.
From the March 2025 issue of Apollo. Preview and subscribe here.