The Ashmolean’s new exhibition is not one of the superlative examples of Italian art and antiquities prized by the English and plundered by them from the ‘classic ground’ during the Grand Tour period. The most impressive artwork on board the Westmorland – Anton Raphael Mengs’ Liberation of Andromeda, which did not, in fact, make it to Spain but instead ended up in the collection of the insatiable Catherine the Great – is not present. Indeed, as the exhibition catalogue notes, The Capture of the Westmorland is more instructive as a demonstration of the degree to which the ‘shopping catalogue’ of Italy had decreased in quality and scope by the last quarter of the eighteenth century. A comparison of the purchases made in the late 1770s by the protagonists of this exhibition with those of their fathers three or so decades before underlines this fact. In addition to being most attractively curated, with display cases placed on top of mock crates marked with the initials of the eighteenth-century collectors whose booty filled the original ship, this exhibition warrants seeing for two main reasons. First, it provides abundant visual and historical stimuli for a meditation on the themes of culture and commerce, and the annexation and inheritance of cultural heritage. Second, more prosaic but equally impressive, is that it is a spectacular manifestation of exceedingly thorough archival (or ‘detective’, as the Ashmolean terms it) work carried out over a period of nearly twenty years, and a timely reminder of the immeasurable worth of undertaking such research projects.

One of the greatest strengths of this exhibition is the multiplicity of narrative threads it skilfully weaves together. Structured thematically, the exhibition highlights the numerous cultural resonances of the items displayed. The first space offers a general introduction to the phenomenon of the Grand Tour through artefacts originating, like all the objects on display, from the Westmorland: the maps, guidebooks, and typical souvenir views bought by travellers before and during their travels which facilitated their Italian experience. It is very much worth noting, further, that the Ashmolean – the only UK museum to have a permanent gallery dedicated to the Grand Tour – has cleverly developed a ‘Grand Tour trail’, which aims to draw out the links between items in the permanent collection and those originating from the Westmorland.

The large second room curates the dramatic fate of the Westmorland. The historical context is the American War of Independence; in January 1779 the Westmorland, an armed English merchant ship, was captured by the French en route from Livorno to London, and the ship and its cargo taken to Spain as a legal prize of war. Displayed here is some of the documentary material, uncovered in a variety of European archives, charting the story of the ship. This ranges from inventories made of the Westmorland’s contents upon its arrival into the port of Málaga on 8 January 1779, to a list (now in the British Library) of the remaining items, dated over four years later, made by the Málagan lonjistas who had bought up the ship’s cargo and sold off, early on, the foodstuffs and other perishables; from a letter from the Prime Minister of Spain, the Conde de Floridablanca, to King Carlos III informing him of the existence of 54 crates of artworks, antiquities, books, and music in a warehouse in the city’s port to, finally, a catalogue made by Floridablanca with the historian Antonio Ponz in April 1784 following the arrival of the crates at the Royal Academy in Madrid. The King’s enthusiastic response to the ‘English Prize’, as items from the Westmorland were designated by the Spanish, tells us much about the productive state of the arts and state-sponsorship in Spain at this time. Whilst a small number of marbles went directly to the royal collection, the majority of the objects were bought by the King and donated by him to the previously limited teaching collection of the country’s Royal Academy. There is no small irony in the fact that English-bought and England-destined artworks, books, and prints ended up as teaching aids at the Spanish Royal Academy only a decade or so before James Barry was agitating against the policies of its English counterpart (such as the plan set forth by the council in 1796 to establish a pension fund for RA members and their widows), which he believed were impeding the development of a sufficient collection of teaching resources for the academy’s students. In part for his vociferous expression of this opinion, Barry became the first and only RA member to have his membership rescinded.

Another mode of enquiry into the story of the Westmorland in the second section of the Ashmolean’s exhibition is presented via some of the owners of, and personalities connected to the objects carried by the ship. A cross-section of individuals is profiled, ranging from society’s grandest – the Duke of Gloucester, brother to George III – through various young aristocrats on tour to the humbler tutors who accompanied these young men abroad and were responsible for their cultural, intellectual, and personal development. Thomas Jenkins, the painter turned long-term art agent and banker in Rome, is omnipresent; a letter from him to the Earl of Dartmouth, detailing the ill-fated arrangements for the shipping of his son’s purchases back to England, is on display, reminding one of just how indispensable he became for English travellers in Italy. Other familiar names such as James Byres and Gavin Hamilton also crop up in relation to the buying and shipping of items, although with less frequency. Four tourists and their belongings are particularly highlighted, however: John Henderson, a young, wealthy Scot who would later become MP for Fife; Francis Basset, later 1st Baron de Dunstanville; and the young Lords Duncannon and Lewisham. Their choice of souvenirs were repetitious and entirely in keeping with the prevailing canon of taste in the second half of the eighteenth century. As historians of the Grand Tour would expect, the Westmorland carried multiple copies of Piranesi’s Vedute, Gavin Hamilton’s Schola Italica Picturae and Giovanni Volpato’s immensely admired engraving of Raphael’s School of Athens. This was alongside oil painting copies of works by those most highly esteemed masters – Raphael, Guido Reni, and Domenichino – and the requisite portraits of their owners by the most fashionable of Roman portrait painters, Pompeo Batoni. There are two major highlights of this section of the exhibition. First, the series of evocative watercolours of Italian, French, and Swiss scenes by John Robert Cozens that were being shipped back to England in one of the cases owned by Basset, who had been taught by Cozens’ father at Eton and whose purchases comprised the greatest in both number and value on board the Westmorland. Second is the alluring, mysterious portrait of an unidentified young man which John Henderson particularly singled out in his strenuous efforts to recover his property in the late eighteenth century.

The final section of the exhibition is centred around antiquities. A plethora of marbles – from chimneypieces to funeral urns to statues – are on display, many of which were being shipped back to England to enter the collection of the Duke of Gloucester. Some of these were previously considered original Roman works but were revealed to be examples of the well-known Grand Tour-era phenomenon of ‘composite antiquities’, where antique statues with missing appendages were ‘finished off’ with modern restorations and, as is the case at the Ashmolean, original funerary urns topped off with deliberately-aged eighteenth-century lids. Research into the origins of these marbles at the museum of archaeology in Madrid provided the catalyst for the rediscovery of the fate of the Westmorland. This room also relates another fascinating episode from the Westmorland story, which is indicative of the continuing fertility of this research project. A particularly interesting documentary source displayed in the exhibition is a letter from a Father Thorpe to the Spanish Ambassador to the Vatican, requesting help with recovering a secret consignment of sacred relics gifted by the Pope to Lord Arundell. This story, unlike that of John Henderson, had a happy ending: an expert on the Arundell family history, unconnected to the Westmorland project, recently contacted the Ashmolean to inform them that he had not only tracked down further information regarding the fate of the Pope’s gift but also the relics themselves, the only item of the Westmorland’s cargo to eventually make it to England. With many initials and ownership marks from the ship’s original crates still unidentified, one hopes that more discoveries like this lie in the future.

‘The English Prize: The Capture of the Westmorland’ is at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, from 17 May to 27 August, and is accompanied by an extensive lecture and events series.