Our secret art collector shares a strategy for starting up.

Before starting their serious collection, most art lovers will already have objects they like on the wall, or the shelf, or both. Things they have picked up, or been given, which look OK and tasteful. Things that have some personal resonance – perhaps a landscape, a portrait, a jug, a poster, a cartoon. Things that fill a space with life and interest. I would not dismiss this as mere decoration, but it is not a collection. The true collection begins with thought and planning. What do you really want to collect? How are you going to set about it?

One of the pleasures in seeing someone else’s collection is getting to know why they have chosen it and how they have built it up. It might be English watercolours, first-nation or ethnic art, contemporary works, ceramics, textiles, engravings from any period, antique maps. Politics and religion can easily come into it. Underlying every serious collection there is a story. When you are moving into serious collector-mode yourself, first work out your own theme and purpose. Work out your story.

You do not have to be narrowly focused. One of the most famous collections in the UK is Sir John Soane’s, visitable at his former home, now Sir John Soane’s Museum, in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. It is an extraordinary array of diverse objects from the ancient world, and the age in which he lived. You will find ancient Greek and Roman statuary, and Soane’s own drawings of the ancient monuments he recorded on his travels in Italy, living in harmony with Hogarth’s biting satires, commissioned architectural designs, and elegant furniture and domestic objects of the period. If that is the kind of collection you want to live with.

You might not enjoy the sort of wealth Soane acquired, but however large or restricted your budget, go for it. Everyone needs to make their own personal decision. The cement which binds my collection is art, mainly but not exclusively British, which has been created in my lifetime and reflects in graphic form the wider thinking, creativeness and social change which I have observed in that period.

Everyone also knows how much they can afford to set them on their journey. But here is the new collector’s dilemma. Blow the budget on one single foundational piece, or multiple objects? For an earlier edition of ROSA (Summer 2024) I took up the challenge of being given a notional £1,000 to start a collection. After an enjoyable tour I ended up with two excellent screen prints, a wood engraving and two ceramics. That is one possible approach. But it is not what I would in fact do. I would start with a single object of the highest quality I could afford, or (better still) could not quite afford but, in a moment of madness, still bought. Set the tone. Get off on the front foot. And keep walking.