A different sort of Grand Tour: the blending of culture and commerce by a proto-European entrepreneurial and ambitious London haberdasher in 1826-1827.

When James Morrison, his wife Mary Ann and their most recent baby Lucy (they had 11 children) set off on their grand tour he had just taken over the textile business of his father-in-law. He had expanded the wholesale business from a turnover of £13,000 a year to £1million (it would rise to almost £2million) – that’s about £200 million in today's money values. He had moved from the City of London out to Balham and begun to collect contemporary art. He was away almost a year from July 1826 to June 1827, travelling to Calais, Brussels, through Germany and Switzerland to Italy (as far south as Naples), returning through Switzerland and Paris. He was able to spend c. £200 a month on hotel, transport, etc., or £20,000 in today’s values.

This paper will examine how the concept of the Grand Tour was adapted by an entrepreneur like Morrison; how he used it for commercial as well as cultural purposes; how it helped him to shift his cultural taste from solely contemporary art to Old Masters and to develop his mercantile activities from London and Europe to North America and the world – trading from Canton to Valparaiso – from local to global.