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Wallace Collection

 
 
Columbia Encyclopedia: Sir Richard Wallace
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Wallace, Sir Richard, 1818-90, English art collector. The illegitimate son of the marquess of Hertford, he inherited in 1871 his father's superb collection of continental art, which he had helped to build. Wallace, created baronet in 1871, was a member of Parliament (1873-85). Lady Wallace bequeathed the Wallace Collection to the government in 1897. Especially fine in the 18th-century French schools, it has been open to the public since 1900 in Hertford House, London.

Bibliography

See H. C. Shelley, The Art of the Wallace Collection (1913).

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Wikipedia: Wallace Collection
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For the band, see Wallace Collection (band).
The Wallace Collection across Manchester Square gardens
One of the rooms that still retains the look of a grand domestic interior

The Wallace Collection is a museum in London, with a world-famous range of fine and decorative arts from the 15th to the 19th centuries with large holdings of French 18th-century paintings, furniture, arms & armour, porcelain and Old Master paintings arranged into 25 galleries.

It was established in 1897 from the private collection mainly created by Richard Seymour-Conway, 4th Marquess of Hertford (1800-1870), who left it and the house to his illegitimate son Sir Richard Wallace (1818-1890), whose widow bequeathed the entire collection to the nation. The museum opened to the public in 1900 in Hertford House, Manchester Square, and remains there, housed in its entirety, to this day. A condition of the bequest was that no object ever leave the collection, even for loan exhibitions. Admission is free. It is a non-departmental public body.

Contents

Collections

Velázquez - Lady with a Fan

The museum's collection numbers nearly 5,500 objects and is best known for its quality and breadth of eighteenth-century French paintings, Sèvres porcelain and French furniture.

The Wallace Collection also displays many other treasures, such as two paintings by Titian, four Rembrandts, three Rubenses, four Van Dycks, twenty-two Canalettos, nineteen Bouchers, masterpieces by Hooch, nine Teniers, Frans Hals, nine Murillos, two Velázquezes and paintings by Domenichino, Cima, Daddi, Reni, Rosa, Thomas Gainsborough, Joshua Reynolds, Antoine Watteau, Nicholas Lancret, Jan Steen, Aelbert Cuyp and nine Guardis. The museum also holds a fine collection of arms and armour, featuring both European and Oriental objects, as well as displays of gold boxes, miniatures, sculpture and medieval and Renaissance works of art such as maiolica, glass, bronzes and Limoges enamels.

The works of art in the Collection comprise [1]:

  • Paintings,Watercolours and Drawings 775
  • Furniture 528
  • Ceramics 510
  • European and Oriental Arms and Armour 2,370
  • Sculpture 466
  • Miniatures 334
  • Medieval and Renaissance Works of Art 363
  • Goldsmiths' Work 120

Departments

Renaissance Limoges enamel dish by Martial Courtois.

The Wallace Collection is split into six curatorial departments, Pictures & Miniatures, Ceramics, Arms & Armour, Objet d'Art, Furniture and Sculpture.

Pictures & Miniatures

The collection's Old Master paintings represent some of the finest works of art in the world, executed by most of the leading artists of their period. The paintings include important works from all periods between the fourteenth to the mid-nineteenth century.

The collection is particularly strong in Dutch and Flemish paintings of the seventeenth century and in eighteenth and nineteenth-century French paintings, though there are also outstanding works by English, Italian and Spanish artists. Strengths of the collection include examples by Rembrandt, Rubens, Van Dyck, Canaletto, Gainsborough, François Boucher, Fragonard, Murillo, Titian, Poussin and Velázquez.

The inventory of pictures, watercolours and drawings comprises all the major European schools.

Paintings, drawing & watercolours from the Wallace Collection

Francois Boucher, Mars and Venus
  1. British, German, Spanish & Italian
    151 paintings, 60 drawings[2]
  2. French Nineteenth Century
    134 paintings, 57 watercolours[3]
  3. French before 1815
    144 paintings, 8 drawings and watercolours[4]
  4. Dutch
    173 paintings, 2 drawings[5]
  5. Flemish
    48 paintings[5]

Dutch School

English School

Flemish School

French School

Italian School

Spanish School

Ceramics

French furniture in one of the rooms

There are fine examples of porcelain by the greatest of makers, including Meissen and one of the world's greatest collections of Sèvres.

The Wallace Collection contains one of the richest and most distinguished collections of eighteenth-century Sèvres porcelain in the world. It includes 137 vases, 80 tea wares, 67 useful wares, 3 biscuit figures and 130 plaques (mostly on furniture), and was acquired by the Marquesses of Hertford and Sir Richard Wallace between c. 1802 and c. 1875[6].

Furniture

The Wallace Collection holds one of the most important collections of French furniture anywhere in the world.[7] Totalling more than five hundred pieces, the collection consists largely of eighteenth-century French furniture but also includes some significant pieces of nineteenth-century French furniture, as well as interesting Italian furniture and a few English and German pieces. The collection ranges from cabinet furniture, much of which is veneered with brass and turtleshell marquetry (commonly known as "Boulle" marquetry) or with wood marquetry, to seat furniture, clocks and barometers, gilt-bronze items including mounted porcelain and hardstones, mantelpieces, mirrors, boxes and pedestals. One highlight of the collection is the major collection of furniture attributed to André-Charles Boulle (1642-1732), perhaps the best-known cabinet-maker ever to have lived.

Building

A few years ago the inner courtyard was given a glass roof and now contains a restaurant.

Gallery

François Boucher, Madame de Pompadour (1759)

Anthony van Dyck, Paris (c. 1628)

Jean-Honoré Fragonard, The Swing (1767)

Frans Hals, The Laughing Cavalier (1624)

Nicolas Poussin, A Dance to the Music of Time (c.1634-1636)

Titian, Perseus and Andromeda (c. 1554-1556)

Jean-Antoine Watteau, The Halt during the Chase (c. 1718-1720)

Adriaen Brouwer, Sleeping peasant

References

  1. ^ The Wallace Collection Annual Report and Accounts 2004-05 HC 832
  2. ^ The Wallace Collection: Catalogue of Pictures I
  3. ^ The Wallace Collection: Catalogue of Pictures II
  4. ^ The Wallace Collection: Catalogue of Pictures III
  5. ^ a b The Wallace Collection: Catalogue of Pictures IV
  6. ^ The Wallace Collection: Catalogue of Sèvres Porcelain - ISBN 0 900785 27 6
  7. ^ The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 139, No. 1136 (Nov., 1997), pp. 792-794
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Coordinates: 51°31′03″N 0°09′11″W / 51.5175°N 0.15306°W / 51.5175; -0.15306


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