From Wikipedia:

Dining Room

Displays: Eighteenth-century still lifes and portraits

The room contains masterworks of French 18th-century portraiture by Nattier and Houdon and two oil sketches by Jean François de Troy, for decoration of Louis XV’s dining room in Fontainebleau, shown to the king for approval.

The Wallace Collection

The Wallace Collection is a museum in London occupying Hertford House in Manchester Square, the former townhouse of the Seymour family, Marquesses of Hertford. It is named after Sir Richard Wallace, who built the extensive collection, along with the Marquesses of Hertford, in the 18th and 19th centuries. The collection features fine and decorative arts from the 15th to the 19th centuries with important holdings of French 18th-century paintings, furniture, arms and armour, porcelain and Old Master paintings arranged into 25 galleries. It is open to the public and entry is free.

It was established in 1897 from the private collection mainly created by Richard Seymour-Conway, 4th Marquess of Hertford (1800–1870), who left both it and the house to his illegitimate son Sir Richard Wallace (1818–1890), whose widow Julie Amelie Charlotte Castelnau bequeathed the entire collection to the nation. The collection opened to permanent public view in 1900 in Hertford House, and remains there to this day. A condition of the bequest was that no object should ever leave the collection, even for loan exhibitions. However in September 2019, the board of trustees announced that they had obtained an order from the Charity Commission for England & Wales which allowed them to enter into temporary loan agreements for the first time.

The United Kingdom is particularly rich in the works of the ancien régime, purchased by wealthy families during the revolutionary sales, held in France after the end of the French Revolution. The Wallace Collection, Waddesdon Manor and the Royal Collection, all three located in the United Kingdom, are some of the largest, most important collections of French 18th-century decorative arts in the world, rivalled only by the Musée du Louvre, Château de Versailles and Mobilier National in France. The Wallace Collection is a non-departmental public body and the current director is Xavier Bray.

The Wallace Collection is a museum which displays works of art collected in the 18th and 19th centuries by five generations of a British aristocratic family – the first four Marquesses of Hertford and Sir Richard Wallace, the illegitimate son of the 4th Marquess. In the 19th century, the Marquesses of Hertford were one of the wealthiest families in Europe. They owned large properties in England, Wales and Ireland, and increased their wealth through successful marriages. Politically of lesser importance, the 3rd and 4th Marquess and Sir Richard Wallace became leading art collectors of their time.

The Wallace Collection, comprising about 5,500 works of art, was bequeathed to the British nation by Lady Wallace in 1897. The state then decided to buy Hertford House to display the collection and it was opened as a museum in 1900. As a museum the Wallace Collection’s main strength is 18th-century French art: paintings, furniture, porcelain, sculpture and gold snuffboxes and 16th- to 19th-century paintings by such as Titian, Van Dyck, Rembrandt, Hals, Velázquez, Gainsborough and Delacroix, a collection of arms and armour and medieval and Renaissance objects including Limoges enamels, maiolica, glass and bronzes. Paintings, furniture and porcelain are displayed together in the manner of private collections of the 19th century.

Image details
Date: 8 December 2025
Camera body: iPhone Xs
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Aperture: ƒ/1.8
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From The Wallace Collection website:

The sitter was identified by a label, as Marie-Charlotte de Châteaurenaud, who married the marquis de Belestat of Toulouse (1725-1807) in 1752. She succeeded her mother as a lady-in-waiting to the daughters of Louis XV and attended the court at Versailles in 1754 and 1755. In 1754 she was involved in a dispute at cards with the comte de Lorge, an incident which Voltaire commemorated in verse. Her commission to Nattier is probably linked to her court career at the time.

The portrait is of a type commonly used by the artist to depict young female sitters: she is dressed in the formal robe à la française with blue silk drapery, three-quarter length, without hands, in front of a neutral background. In contrast to other contemporary portraitists Nattier’s aim was not to represent the psychology of his sitters but to provide a fashionable and beautiful image according to society ideals.

Object description
Type: Easel painting
Location: The Wallace Collection, London
Material: Oil on canvas
Artist: Jean-Marc Nattier (1685 – 1766)
Date: 1755

Image details
Date: 8 December 2025
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Shutter Speed: 1/33s
ISO: 250
Licensing: Image of a Wallace Collection asset. This image cannot be licensed.

From The Wallace Collection website:

The painting was originally conceived as a fête galante, a genre of painting that shows costumed figures in parkland settings. The hunters and their accoutrements, which now transform the scene into a hunting party, were added at a later stage. They were plucked by the artist from earlier sources; the group of gentlemen helping the lady to dismount appears in Jacques Callot’s (1592–1635) famous engraving ‘The Fair of Impruneta’ of 1620, the front legs of the horse that are omitted in the painting are hardly visible in the print. The young man standing with a gun and four dogs on the left is copied from an engraving by Pietro Testa (1611–1650). The resulting composition is strangely inconsistent: some figures appear in seventeenth century costume, others in fashionable contemporary dress, and little reference to the hunt is made in either costume or activity. Watteau followed the model of Dutch paintings depicting hunters at rest, such as those by Philips Wouwerman (1619–1668), that were highly fashionable among French collectors. The work initiated a long series of hunting breakfasts painted by French painters throughout the eighteenth century.

On the basis of an apocryphal letter, supposedly written by Watteau to Jean de Julienne in 1720, ‘Rendez-vous de chasse’ was once thought to have been a wedding gift from the artist to his friend’s wife, a theory that is definitely incorrect. The first certain owner was the Receiver-General of Taxes, Jean-Baptiste Racine de Jonquoy, in whose collection the picture was named in an engraving of 1731 by Aubert. This work and another now in the Wallace Collection, ‘Fête galante in a Wooded Landscape’ (P391), were described as pendants in a series of sales in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, including those of the comte de Vaudreuil, Cardinal Fresch and the duc de Morny. Watteau did not intend them as a pair. “Rendez-vous de chasse” was only extended on the left at an unknown moment after 1731 to form a better pair with its present pendant. The two paintings are documented in the same collections from 1787 to 1848 and then since 1865. The 4th Marquess of Hertford had acquired both paintings separately.

Object description
Type: Easel painting
Location: The Wallace Collection, London
Material: Oil on canvas
Artist: Antoine Watteau (1684 – 1721)
Date: 1717-1718

Image details
Date: 8 December 2025
Camera body: iPhone Xs
Lens: Wide Camera 26mm ƒ/1.8
Focal Length: 26mm
Aperture: ƒ/1.8
Shutter Speed: 1/33s
ISO: 400
Licensing: Image of a Wallace Collection asset. This image cannot be licensed.

From Wikipedia:

Billiard Room

Displays: The Decorative Arts under Louis XIV

The Wallace Collection

The Wallace Collection is a museum in London occupying Hertford House in Manchester Square, the former townhouse of the Seymour family, Marquesses of Hertford. It is named after Sir Richard Wallace, who built the extensive collection, along with the Marquesses of Hertford, in the 18th and 19th centuries. The collection features fine and decorative arts from the 15th to the 19th centuries with important holdings of French 18th-century paintings, furniture, arms and armour, porcelain and Old Master paintings arranged into 25 galleries. It is open to the public and entry is free.

It was established in 1897 from the private collection mainly created by Richard Seymour-Conway, 4th Marquess of Hertford (1800–1870), who left both it and the house to his illegitimate son Sir Richard Wallace (1818–1890), whose widow Julie Amelie Charlotte Castelnau bequeathed the entire collection to the nation. The collection opened to permanent public view in 1900 in Hertford House, and remains there to this day. A condition of the bequest was that no object should ever leave the collection, even for loan exhibitions. However in September 2019, the board of trustees announced that they had obtained an order from the Charity Commission for England & Wales which allowed them to enter into temporary loan agreements for the first time.

The United Kingdom is particularly rich in the works of the ancien régime, purchased by wealthy families during the revolutionary sales, held in France after the end of the French Revolution. The Wallace Collection, Waddesdon Manor and the Royal Collection, all three located in the United Kingdom, are some of the largest, most important collections of French 18th-century decorative arts in the world, rivalled only by the Musée du Louvre, Château de Versailles and Mobilier National in France. The Wallace Collection is a non-departmental public body and the current director is Xavier Bray.

The Wallace Collection is a museum which displays works of art collected in the 18th and 19th centuries by five generations of a British aristocratic family – the first four Marquesses of Hertford and Sir Richard Wallace, the illegitimate son of the 4th Marquess. In the 19th century, the Marquesses of Hertford were one of the wealthiest families in Europe. They owned large properties in England, Wales and Ireland, and increased their wealth through successful marriages. Politically of lesser importance, the 3rd and 4th Marquess and Sir Richard Wallace became leading art collectors of their time.

The Wallace Collection, comprising about 5,500 works of art, was bequeathed to the British nation by Lady Wallace in 1897. The state then decided to buy Hertford House to display the collection and it was opened as a museum in 1900. As a museum the Wallace Collection’s main strength is 18th-century French art: paintings, furniture, porcelain, sculpture and gold snuffboxes and 16th- to 19th-century paintings by such as Titian, Van Dyck, Rembrandt, Hals, Velázquez, Gainsborough and Delacroix, a collection of arms and armour and medieval and Renaissance objects including Limoges enamels, maiolica, glass and bronzes. Paintings, furniture and porcelain are displayed together in the manner of private collections of the 19th century.

Image details
Date: 8 December 2025
Camera body: iPhone Xs
Lens: Wide Camera 26mm ƒ/1.8
Focal Length: 26mm
Aperture: ƒ/1.8
Shutter Speed: 1/25s
ISO: 320
Licence: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

From Wikipedia:

Billiard Room

Displays: The Decorative Arts under Louis XIV

The Wallace Collection

The Wallace Collection is a museum in London occupying Hertford House in Manchester Square, the former townhouse of the Seymour family, Marquesses of Hertford. It is named after Sir Richard Wallace, who built the extensive collection, along with the Marquesses of Hertford, in the 18th and 19th centuries. The collection features fine and decorative arts from the 15th to the 19th centuries with important holdings of French 18th-century paintings, furniture, arms and armour, porcelain and Old Master paintings arranged into 25 galleries. It is open to the public and entry is free.

It was established in 1897 from the private collection mainly created by Richard Seymour-Conway, 4th Marquess of Hertford (1800–1870), who left both it and the house to his illegitimate son Sir Richard Wallace (1818–1890), whose widow Julie Amelie Charlotte Castelnau bequeathed the entire collection to the nation. The collection opened to permanent public view in 1900 in Hertford House, and remains there to this day. A condition of the bequest was that no object should ever leave the collection, even for loan exhibitions. However in September 2019, the board of trustees announced that they had obtained an order from the Charity Commission for England & Wales which allowed them to enter into temporary loan agreements for the first time.

The United Kingdom is particularly rich in the works of the ancien régime, purchased by wealthy families during the revolutionary sales, held in France after the end of the French Revolution. The Wallace Collection, Waddesdon Manor and the Royal Collection, all three located in the United Kingdom, are some of the largest, most important collections of French 18th-century decorative arts in the world, rivalled only by the Musée du Louvre, Château de Versailles and Mobilier National in France. The Wallace Collection is a non-departmental public body and the current director is Xavier Bray.

The Wallace Collection is a museum which displays works of art collected in the 18th and 19th centuries by five generations of a British aristocratic family – the first four Marquesses of Hertford and Sir Richard Wallace, the illegitimate son of the 4th Marquess. In the 19th century, the Marquesses of Hertford were one of the wealthiest families in Europe. They owned large properties in England, Wales and Ireland, and increased their wealth through successful marriages. Politically of lesser importance, the 3rd and 4th Marquess and Sir Richard Wallace became leading art collectors of their time.

The Wallace Collection, comprising about 5,500 works of art, was bequeathed to the British nation by Lady Wallace in 1897. The state then decided to buy Hertford House to display the collection and it was opened as a museum in 1900. As a museum the Wallace Collection’s main strength is 18th-century French art: paintings, furniture, porcelain, sculpture and gold snuffboxes and 16th- to 19th-century paintings by such as Titian, Van Dyck, Rembrandt, Hals, Velázquez, Gainsborough and Delacroix, a collection of arms and armour and medieval and Renaissance objects including Limoges enamels, maiolica, glass and bronzes. Paintings, furniture and porcelain are displayed together in the manner of private collections of the 19th century.

Image details
Date: 8 December 2025
Camera body: iPhone Xs
Lens: Wide Camera 26mm ƒ/1.8
Focal Length: 26mm
Aperture: ƒ/1.8
Shutter Speed: 1/33s
ISO: 400
Licence: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

From Wikipedia:

The Wallace Collection is a museum in London occupying Hertford House in Manchester Square, the former townhouse of the Seymour family, Marquesses of Hertford. It is named after Sir Richard Wallace, who built the extensive collection, along with the Marquesses of Hertford, in the 18th and 19th centuries. The collection features fine and decorative arts from the 15th to the 19th centuries with important holdings of French 18th-century paintings, furniture, arms and armour, porcelain and Old Master paintings arranged into 25 galleries. It is open to the public and entry is free.

It was established in 1897 from the private collection mainly created by Richard Seymour-Conway, 4th Marquess of Hertford (1800–1870), who left both it and the house to his illegitimate son Sir Richard Wallace (1818–1890), whose widow Julie Amelie Charlotte Castelnau bequeathed the entire collection to the nation. The collection opened to permanent public view in 1900 in Hertford House, and remains there to this day. A condition of the bequest was that no object should ever leave the collection, even for loan exhibitions. However in September 2019, the board of trustees announced that they had obtained an order from the Charity Commission for England & Wales which allowed them to enter into temporary loan agreements for the first time.

The United Kingdom is particularly rich in the works of the ancien régime, purchased by wealthy families during the revolutionary sales, held in France after the end of the French Revolution. The Wallace Collection, Waddesdon Manor and the Royal Collection, all three located in the United Kingdom, are some of the largest, most important collections of French 18th-century decorative arts in the world, rivalled only by the Musée du Louvre, Château de Versailles and Mobilier National in France. The Wallace Collection is a non-departmental public body and the current director is Xavier Bray.

The Wallace Collection is a museum which displays works of art collected in the 18th and 19th centuries by five generations of a British aristocratic family – the first four Marquesses of Hertford and Sir Richard Wallace, the illegitimate son of the 4th Marquess. In the 19th century, the Marquesses of Hertford were one of the wealthiest families in Europe. They owned large properties in England, Wales and Ireland, and increased their wealth through successful marriages. Politically of lesser importance, the 3rd and 4th Marquess and Sir Richard Wallace became leading art collectors of their time.

The Wallace Collection, comprising about 5,500 works of art, was bequeathed to the British nation by Lady Wallace in 1897. The state then decided to buy Hertford House to display the collection and it was opened as a museum in 1900. As a museum the Wallace Collection’s main strength is 18th-century French art: paintings, furniture, porcelain, sculpture and gold snuffboxes and 16th- to 19th-century paintings by such as Titian, Van Dyck, Rembrandt, Hals, Velázquez, Gainsborough and Delacroix, a collection of arms and armour and medieval and Renaissance objects including Limoges enamels, maiolica, glass and bronzes. Paintings, furniture and porcelain are displayed together in the manner of private collections of the 19th century.

Hertford House

The present House in Manchester Square was the townhouse of a later junior branch of the family. It was built in 1776 by George Montagu, 4th Duke of Manchester who owned and developed the surrounding estate.[8] It dominates the north side of the Square, where it occupies an island site, and was originally named “Manchester House”. After being used as the Spanish Embassy 1791–1795 (evidenced by “Spanish Place” the street to the east of the building) the lease was acquired in 1797 by Francis Ingram-Seymour-Conway, 2nd Marquess of Hertford (1743–1822), who in 1814 held there the Allied Sovereigns’ Ball after the first defeat of Napoleon in 1814. Francis Seymour-Conway, 3rd Marquess of Hertford (1777–1842), the family’s first great art collector, lived mainly at his other London residences, Dorchester House in Mayfair and St Dunstan’s Villa in Regents Park, now the site of the residence of the US Ambassador. Between 1836-51 Hertford House was let for use as the French Embassy. His son Richard Seymour-Conway, 4th Marquess of Hertford (1800–1870), who expanded his father’s art collection, lived most of his life in Paris, and rarely visited Hertford House, used “largely as a store for his ever-expanding art collection”. He is said never to have visited his principal English country seat of Ragley Hall in Warwickshire. The 4th Marquess died in 1870, aged 70 in Paris, unmarried and without legitimate issue, and his titles and entailed estates, including the lease of Hertford House, passed to his distant cousin Francis Seymour, 5th Marquess of Hertford (1812–1884).

The 4th Marquess’s illegitimate son and heir of his unentailed estate, Sir Richard Wallace, 1st Baronet (1818–1890), inherited his art collection, French and Irish estates, and re-purchased Sudbourne Hall in Suffolk and, in 1871, the lease of Hertford House from the 5th Marquess, and returned from Paris with much of the art collection to take up residence in England, following the unstable political climate in France following the Prussian Siege of Paris (1870–1871). Wallace in turn expanded the art collection, adding medieval and Renaissance objects and European arms and armour.

Between 1872–1882 the house was much altered by Sir Richard Wallace, who added a rear extension to house his art collection with a smoking room lined with Minton tiles in Turkish style. Under the architect Thomas Ambler a new front portico was added in the form of a porte-cochère, with large Doric pilasters, storeys were added to both wings and the stables and coach house were converted to galleries by the addition of top-lit roofs. The whole building was given a red brick facade and the windows were altered. Wallace bequeathed all his assets to his wife, who in turn, and most probably according to his wishes, bequeathed the main part of her husband’s art collection to the nation, thus forming the “Wallace Collection”, the rest, including the French properties and Hertford House, going to the couple’s secretary Sir John Murray Scott, 1st Baronet. Scott sold the lease of Hertford House to the UK Government, as a suitable home for the Wallace Collection, after which he was rewarded with a baronetcy, and the Government acquired the freehold from the Portman Estate. Hertford House first opened as a museum on 22 June 1900.

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, later part of Scott’s inheritance. The museum display does not aim to reconstruct the state of the house when Sir Richard and Lady Wallace lived here.

Image details
Date: 8 December 2025
Camera body: iPhone Xs
Lens: Wide Camera 26mm ƒ/1.8
Focal Length: 26mm
Aperture: ƒ/1.8
Shutter Speed: 1/78s
ISO: 100
Licence: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

From The Wallace Collection website:

The present picture was thought to be by Oudry when acquired by the 4th Marquess of Hertford, and continued to be catalogued as such until given to Alexandre-François Desportes in 1928. More recently, it was reattributed by Jacky to Nicolas Desportes, Alexandre-François’s nephew. It is probably the picture exhibited at the Salon of 1755 (no. 143), described as ‘a spaniel and a pointer quenching their thirst at a rustic fountain’ (‘un Epagneul & un Braque, qui se desalterent dans une Fontaine rustique’). At the Salon, it was paired with a painting of two dogs with dead game and a pheasant. It was sold in 1855 at the sale of the baron de Commailles as one of a set of three Oudrys, including another picture now at the Wallace Collection and attributed to Jacques-Charles Oudry (Hawk attacking wild Duck, P624). Desportes’s painting was extended at the top to match Oudry’s work which probably happened when the new group of three was created at an unknown date before 1855. The third painting of dogs and a duck is untraced.

Nicolas Desportes followed the style of his uncle closely and continued in his vain well beyond the former’s death.

Object description
Type: Easel painting
Location: The Wallace Collection, London
Material: Oil on canvas
Artist: Nicolas Desportes the Younger (1718 – 1787)
Date: 1754-1755

Image details
Date: 8 December 2025
Camera body: iPhone Xs
Lens: Wide Camera 26mm ƒ/1.8
Focal Length: 26mm
Aperture: ƒ/1.8
Shutter Speed: 1/25s
ISO: 400
Licensing: Image of a Wallace Collection asset. This image cannot be licensed.

From The Wallace Collection website:

A vertical varient of a horizontal composition by Oudry, prepared in 1737, the main version in Schwerin (Staatliches Museum Schwerin/Ludwigslust/Güstrow, inv. no. G219). Watercolours of the hawk and of the ducks are attributed to Jacques-Charles Oudry (Oudry Album; Cambridge, Massachusetts, Fogg Art Museum). This picture is one of a so-called ‘set’ of three attributed to Oudry sold at the baron de Commailles sale in 1855. A further picture from the same group is in the Wallace Collection and is now attributed to Nicolas Desportes (P623). The painting has long been regarded as a work by Jean-Baptiste Oudry or his workshop, the attribution to his son was suggested by Pierre Jacky.

Object description
Type: Easel painting
Location: The Wallace Collection, London
Material: Oil on canvas
Artist: Attributed to Jacques-Charles Oudry (1722 – 1778)
Date: 1737-1747

Image details
Date: 8 December 2025
Camera body: iPhone Xs
Lens: Wide Camera 26mm ƒ/1.8
Focal Length: 26mm
Aperture: ƒ/1.8
Shutter Speed: 1/25s
ISO: 500
Licensing: Image of a Wallace Collection asset. This image cannot be licensed.

From The Wallace Collection website:

The painting is a brilliant example of the more ambitious buffets Desportes began to paint at the end of Louis XIV’s reign. Desportes followed the Flemish still-life tradition that was popular in Paris and that he absorbed from his teacher Bernaerts but developed a harmonious colour scheme and more dramatic compositions. The fragment of a capital in the composite order indicates that the painting was intended for a high-ranking patron. From Bonnier de la Mosson’s collection, the painting is recorded with its pendant P594: Both pendants were probably meant to hang on the same wall as the light comes from the left in both cases. The first known owner, Joseph Binner de la Mosson, had built up an important collection on natural history.

Object description
Type: Easel painting
Location: The Wallace Collection, London
Material: Oil on canvas
Artist: Alexandre-François Desportes (1661 – 1743)
Date: about 1715

Image details
Date: 8 December 2025
Camera body: iPhone Xs
Lens: Wide Camera 26mm ƒ/1.8
Focal Length: 26mm
Aperture: ƒ/1.8
Shutter Speed: 1/25s
ISO: 500
Licensing: Image of a Wallace Collection asset. This image cannot be licensed.

From Wikipedia:

Back State Room

Displays: The Rococo at the time of Louis XV and Madame de Pompadour

The Back State Room is today dedicated to the patronage of King Louis XV (1715–1774) and his mistress, Madame de Pompadour. It displays some of the prominent examples in the Wallace Collection of art in the rococo style. Sir Richard Wallace used the Back State Room to entertain guests at Hertford House. During his lifetime it had wooden boiserie panelling on the wall; the great chandelier, by Jacques Caffiéri, dating from 1751, remains in the room.

The Wallace Collection

The Wallace Collection is a museum in London occupying Hertford House in Manchester Square, the former townhouse of the Seymour family, Marquesses of Hertford. It is named after Sir Richard Wallace, who built the extensive collection, along with the Marquesses of Hertford, in the 18th and 19th centuries. The collection features fine and decorative arts from the 15th to the 19th centuries with important holdings of French 18th-century paintings, furniture, arms and armour, porcelain and Old Master paintings arranged into 25 galleries. It is open to the public and entry is free.

It was established in 1897 from the private collection mainly created by Richard Seymour-Conway, 4th Marquess of Hertford (1800–1870), who left both it and the house to his illegitimate son Sir Richard Wallace (1818–1890), whose widow Julie Amelie Charlotte Castelnau bequeathed the entire collection to the nation. The collection opened to permanent public view in 1900 in Hertford House, and remains there to this day. A condition of the bequest was that no object should ever leave the collection, even for loan exhibitions. However in September 2019, the board of trustees announced that they had obtained an order from the Charity Commission for England & Wales which allowed them to enter into temporary loan agreements for the first time.

The United Kingdom is particularly rich in the works of the ancien régime, purchased by wealthy families during the revolutionary sales, held in France after the end of the French Revolution. The Wallace Collection, Waddesdon Manor and the Royal Collection, all three located in the United Kingdom, are some of the largest, most important collections of French 18th-century decorative arts in the world, rivalled only by the Musée du Louvre, Château de Versailles and Mobilier National in France. The Wallace Collection is a non-departmental public body and the current director is Xavier Bray.

The Wallace Collection is a museum which displays works of art collected in the 18th and 19th centuries by five generations of a British aristocratic family – the first four Marquesses of Hertford and Sir Richard Wallace, the illegitimate son of the 4th Marquess. In the 19th century, the Marquesses of Hertford were one of the wealthiest families in Europe. They owned large properties in England, Wales and Ireland, and increased their wealth through successful marriages. Politically of lesser importance, the 3rd and 4th Marquess and Sir Richard Wallace became leading art collectors of their time.

The Wallace Collection, comprising about 5,500 works of art, was bequeathed to the British nation by Lady Wallace in 1897. The state then decided to buy Hertford House to display the collection and it was opened as a museum in 1900. As a museum the Wallace Collection’s main strength is 18th-century French art: paintings, furniture, porcelain, sculpture and gold snuffboxes and 16th- to 19th-century paintings by such as Titian, Van Dyck, Rembrandt, Hals, Velázquez, Gainsborough and Delacroix, a collection of arms and armour and medieval and Renaissance objects including Limoges enamels, maiolica, glass and bronzes. Paintings, furniture and porcelain are displayed together in the manner of private collections of the 19th century.

Image details
Date: 8 December 2025
Camera body: iPhone Xs
Lens: Wide Camera 26mm ƒ/1.8
Focal Length: 26mm
Aperture: ƒ/1.8
Shutter Speed: 1/25s
ISO: 640
Licence: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International