Episode. 1004. Grand Tour, Artists and Patronage.

Inspiring and established artists used their version of the grand tour to copy the antiquarian master paintings. These were not wealthy enough to be part of the actual grand tour: they were hangers on, either fighting for scraps doled out by the wealthier visitors, making contacts that would be invaluable back home or simply mastering a style.

Of recent years Spain has been loosing 3-6 percent of its population, almost 3,500. Towns and villages have become abandoned since the late 70’s.

World travelers spawned an entire industry of fakes being produced and souvenirs. At times grand tourers after returning home, found an increased social status and or political positions.

All the big names of tour artifact hunters whom helped start the world’s first public museum, with many of them starting museums in their homes.

Dutch Delftware, its vases, plates, bowels and figures, have been touched by women for over 3 centuries, from shop daughters to potters widows to queens and American heiresses. The women who made, collected, and preserved them were all responding to unique opportunities, challenges and pivotal change. Their lives are intertwined with these objects, this blue and white holds their stories.

The contributions of women continued, creating parks, The Van Cortlandt House Museum, windmill China, Old Dutch Cleanser, Dutch Boy paints, and Dutch-Colonial architecture just to name a few.

Alice Claypoole Gwynn and other prominent NYC women set forth the Cooper Hewitt and Metropolitan Museums in motion.

An introduction to tours of this type, taking a contemporary of highlights in France and Italy.

Women create the National Society of The Colonial Dames Of America saving structures like the Mount Vernon Estate and other historic dwellings. These were some of the first house museums the public could walk through.

Alice Morse Earle and Elizabeth Duane Gillespie were major contributors to women in the arts an sciences.