Viscount Berehaven’s tour of Italy in 1842–3: Collecting ‘articles of taste’ for Bantry House: Collecting 'articles of taste' for Bantry House

Richard White, Viscount Berehaven, was an ambitious collector who developed wide-ranging artistic tastes in a series of Continental tours beginning in the 1820s and sustained until the 1840s. While these peregrinations in Europe are sparsely documented, a little-studied cache of the nobleman’s letters does help to throw light on his collecting activities in Italy through the winter of 1842–3. The correspondence provides rare information on objects he had recently acquired in Rome, Naples, Leghorn and Genoa, while also clarifying details of the items’ shipment to Ireland. But Berehaven’s letters become even more revealing when they are considered alongside the unpublished travel diary of his wife, Lady Mary, daughter of the 2nd Marquess of Thomond. Taken together, the records enable the identification of some of the ‘articles of taste’ still on display at Bantry House, County Cork, and detail the circumstances in which the objects were purchased in the first place.