Wallace Collection

Collections

The 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, five Rembrandts, nine Rubenses, four Van Dycks, eight Canalettos, nineteen Bouchers, masterpieces by de Hooch, nine Teniers, Frans Hals, nine Murillos, two Velázquez and paintings by Domenichino, Cima, Daddi, Reni, Rosa, Thomas Gainsborough, Joshua Reynolds, Antoine Watteau, Nicholas Lancret, Jan Steen, Aelbert Cuyp and nine Guardis. The Collection also includes 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:

Building

The 16th and 17th century Hertford House, townhouse of Edward Seymour, 1st Earl of Hertford (1539-1621) was in a different location, namely in Cannon Row in Westminster. His father Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset (executed 1552), brother of Queen Jane Seymour, had started building the palatial Somerset House on the Strand as his townhouse, but did not live to complete it. The present House in Manchester Square was the townhouse of a later branch of the family. In 2000 the inner courtyard was given a glass roof and a restaurant was opened named "Cafe Bagatelle" after the Château de Bagatelle in Paris purchased in 1835 by Francis Seymour-Conway, 3rd Marquess of Hertford. The Wallace Restaurant is now run by Peyton and Byrne as a French-style brasserie. The architect was Rick Mather.

Departments

The Wallace Collection is split into six curatorial departments, Pictures and Miniatures, Ceramics and Glass, Sculpture and Works of Art, Arms and Armour, Sèvres porcelain and Gold Boxes and Furniture.

Pictures and miniatures

The Wallace 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 Wallace 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 and watercolours from the Wallace Collection

1. British, German, Spanish & Italian – 151 paintings, 60 drawings
2. French (19th Century) – 134 paintings, 57 watercolours
3. French (before 1815) – 144 paintings, 8 drawings and watercolours
4. Dutch – 173 paintings, 2 drawings
5. Flemish – 8 paintings

Dutch School

English School

Flemish School

French School

Italian School

Spanish School

Paintings

Ceramics

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 the richest and most distinguished museum 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. 1802–75.

Furniture

The Wallace Collection holds one of the most important collections of French furniture in the UK, and ranks alongside the Musée du Louvre, the Royal Collection, Waddesdon Manor, the collections of the Duke of Buccleuch, the Getty Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art as one of the greatest and most celebrated in the world. 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.

Joseph Baumhauer – 1 item;

André-Charles Boulle – 22 items;

Martin Carlin – 4 items;

Adrien Delorme – 2 items;

Étienne Doirat – 1 item;

Étienne Levasseur – 5 items;

Alexandre-Jean Oppenord – 3 items;

Jean Henri Riesener – 10 items;

Bernard I Van Risen Burgh – 1 item;

Nicolas Sageot – 2 items;

Adam Weisweiler – 4 items;