Synthetic research of generalised nature on the emergence, content, prevailing trends and changes in taste in Lithuanian collections, especially those accumulated on the grounds of foreign fine arts, hardly exist in Lithuanian art history. Art collections are usually researched only from the perspective of patronage. This encouraged to choose the collections of Western European fine arts, in particular the collections of paintings, the circumstances of their emergence in Lithuanian manors in the 19 th century and a specific case of the collection of Władyslaw Tyszkiewicz as the subject of the doctoral thesis. The aim of the doctoral thesis is to generalise the relation of the local aristocracy at that time to foreign art objects and assess Lithuanian collections in the context of Western European collecting on the grounds of the analysis of the content and circumstances of Western European art collections in Lithuania in the 19 th century. The thesis reviews the change in the appreciation of the so called “Old Masters” (i.e. fine arts of 14 th –18 th centuries) in Western Europe during the 19 th century, the content of the sets of works of fine arts of Western Europe which were present in Lithuania in the 19 th century, as well as the libraries of private manors and published cultural texts. It reveals the incentives, influences and opportunities to acquire works abroad of Lithuanian collectors and conveys the development of collecting in Lithuania in the 19 th – early 20 th centuries and the circumstances that had an impact on it. The main objectives implied employment of a historiographic method. In addition, factographic research, comparative analysis and the methodology of social art history aimed at functioning of fine arts in society were also used. The method of case study was also employed to reveal the typicality of the phenomenon of collecting of Władyslaw Tyszkiewicz and the epilogue of colleting tradition in Lithuania. The thesis makes a significant contribution to Lithuanian historiography of collecting. The newly discovered data and insights made on them encourage a broader look at the phenomenon of collecting, personality of the collector, the reasons of his choices, contextual assessment of case studies as a part of a phenomenon that has become a characteristic feature of the era. Finally, this work contributes to the attempts to reduce the isolation of the culture of manors, which is often felt in the construction of Lithuanian identity. In addition to still existing image of the 19th-century Lithuania as an isolated country, the thesis encourages to look at another- i.e. European element of culture of that time. In this way the research actualizes the heritage of fine arts preserved in Lithuanian memory institutions and explains its existence.