The collecting practices of Alfred Pope and Harris Whittemore

Abstract Alfred Atmore Pope (1842–1913) and Arthur Harris Whittemore (1864–1927) were two of the earliest collectors of French Impressionism in the United States. This article places them in conversation as two inextricably connected collectors. By examining how they acquired and lived with their artworks, and fashioned afterlives using art, it questions how – despite similar exposure to modernism – these men developed two very different collecting practices. Separating themselves from earlier traditions of ­collecting, Pope and Whittemore worked together in sharing their collections. They are key to a larger discussion about the development of taste during the Gilded Age that focuses on how those with ­increasing wealth employed both Colonial Revival style and modernism in pursuit of defining a new and uniquely American cultural identity. Analysing the construction of these two collections in the domestic interior illuminates how art was employed in presenting oneself as an American and as an individual.