Scott Thomas Buckle, who left school at 16 with no particular interest in art, has steadily amassed more than 5,000 paintings and drawings by artists from the Pre-Raphaelite era, often picking up bargains for just a few pounds on eBay and in flea markets.
A selection of 21 of his collected drawings, including works by John Everett Millais and John William Waterhouse, join paintings which were bequeathed to the residents of Hammersmith & Fulham in a show entitled Victorian Treasures.
"They've done an excellent job," said Scott after doing a preview tour of the exhibition which opened this week at Leighton House museum in Holland Park Road, and runs until September. See our full exhibition story here.
It's a real feather in the cap of a local lad who was born in Parsons Green maternity hospital, grew up in Munster Road, attended St Thomas of Canterbury primary in Estcourt Road.
"That paid for my collecting habit," he said, although his interest in Victorian art began in a bizarre way. As a child he had a single volume of an encyclopedia set for the letter B and, as an alphabetical accident, instantly warmed to pictures by the medievalist painter Edward Burne-Jones! "That really made an impact on me," he said. "I saw a Burne-Jones image, and just fell in love with it."
Exhibitions
A school trip to the V&A Museum cemented that passion, but it wasn't until he was 20 in 1987 that a TV episode of the Great Antiques Hunt in which actress Joan Collins stumbled upon a rare drawing in a dusty flea market that he got the collecting bug.
"The next week I went to Portobello Market and started buying stuff for £1, sometimes £10, in the bargain bin," he said. He began going to exhibitions, including one at the William Morris Society's Hammersmith gallery featuring Burne-Jones works in the Cecil French bequest, left to the people of H&F in the 1950s.
In a neat completion of the circle, Scott's collected drawings now hang alongside works from the Cecil French Collection which inspired him in the new Leighton House show.
It's not the first time a pick from Scott's collection has been exhibited. Several years ago he found a painting by Victorian watercolourist Richard Dadd on eBay, and bought it for £300. When it subsequently featured in a show in the Watts Gallery it was valued for insurance at £60,000.
Victorian art
Scott's love for Victorian art may have started even earlier. He'd have been five months old when his mother pushed his pram past Fulham Library in 1967 at the time a Victorian art exhibition was on, featuring works from the Burne-Jones' family studio in North End Road. Did the young Scott open his eyes, spot a poster and make a mental note? He likes to think so!
"I buy drawings and paintings because I like them," insists Scott, who still lives in Fulham, but now works as a freelance art historian, advising museums, galleries and auction houses. Although he admits it's difficult keeping track of all 5,200 items in his collection, he still goes to art fairs to buy.
Two of his discovered sketches, shrewdly bought for £110 and £55, and drawn by Millais when he was only 12, feature in the current show.
The Victorian Treasures exhibition, featuring works from the Cecil French bequest and Scott's collection, is at Leighton House and is on show until 21 September.
Leighton House is the former home and studio of Victorian artist, Frederic, Lord Leighton (1830-1896). It is unique among the capital's museums in combining a collection of Victorian art with the intimacy of a private home. It also has a new cafe!
