This chapter concerns the position of the art collector in debates on painting copyright 1850-1911. I show that a complex relationship between the intangible work and the physical object was explored in nineteenth century debates about painting copyright such that copyright was conceived also as a law for regulating and restricting artists. Unlike literature where, once published, the physical book manuscript was understood to have no inherent value at all, with painting, the physical object – the painting on canvas – was often of great financial value. Accordingly, it was frequently contended that copyright should protect interests in the painting as a physical object, alongside or in preference to authorial interests in the intangible work; copyright was to be used against artists, that is, to restrict the activities of artists that were thought to damage the economic value of the physical painting owned by a collector. In exploring this facet of the copyright debates, I uncover the interplay between the copyright and the nineteenth century taxonomy of the copy, described in art historical literature: Patricia Mainardi’s 'The 19th-Century Art Trade: Copies, Variations, Replicas' and Dianne Sachko Macleod’s 'Art and the Victorian Middle Class: Money and the Making of Cultural Identity'.