EARLY 20TH-CENTURY AMERICAN TRAVELERS AND ART DEALERS OF THE SPANISH ARTISTIC AND HISTORICAL HERITAGE: ARTHUR AND MILDRED STAPLEY BYNE AND THEIR DOUBLE LIVES AS PLUNDERERS AND TRAVEL WRITERS
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.12795/REN.2023.i27.1Keywords:
American travelers in Spain; twentieth-century travel accounts; Arthur and Mildred Stapley Byne; Spanish art; American Hispanism; Archer Milton Huntington; American art dealers; The Hispanic Society of AmericaAbstract
ABSTRACT: In this article, I analyze the unorthodox activities carried out by the American travelers and art dealers Arthur Byne and his wife Mildred Stanley Byne in their search for artistic treasures in Spain during the first third of the twentieth century. Whilst they plundered, Mr. and Mrs. Byne published a number of quality works on Spanish art, all of them profusely illustrated with photographs and maps. This article sets out to contrast their travel writing with their predatory endeavor in Spain. The Bynes took advantage of the backwardness and the political weakness of Spain, its institutional and ecclesiastical corruption and the poverty of the common people to carry out their looting activities easily. Their literary production between 1914 and 1924 began by being purely descriptive analyses of Spain’s artistic heritage, but gradually evolved into more personal travel accounts on the country (1925-26). However, behind the strategy of showing their willingness to promote foreign cultural tourism in Spain and the encouragement of tourists’ in situ visits to the sites described in their works, the Bynes were stealthily looting the Spanish artistic treasure to sell it in the USA, a practice that they successfully managed to disguise in their travel writing.
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Accepted 2022-12-16
Published 2023-05-05
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