- Wikidata identifier:
- Q1241163
- Also known as:
- England London UK. Dulwich Picture Gallery, England, UK. Dulwich Picture Gallery London, Dulwich College. Dulwich Gallery
- Instance of:
- art museum; independent museum
- Museum/collection status:
- Accredited museum; Designated collection
- Accreditation number:
- 19
- Persistent shareable link for this record:
- https://museumdata.uk/museums/q1241163/
Collection-level records:
-
Collection overview (Cornucopia)
Fine Art Collection
The collections contain approximately 750 paintings, drawings and engravings of the 15th to 19th centuries, but mainly old master paintings from the 17th and 18th centuries, together with a small number of works on paper mainly of historical interest and graphic works relating to the building. Originated in the art dealership of a Frenchman, Nol Desenfans, and his younger Swiss friend, Sir Francis Bourgeois, based in London who were commissioned in 1790 by Stanislaus Augustus, King of Poland, to form from scratch a Royal Collection-cum-National Gallery in order to ‘encourage the progress of the fine arts in Poland.’ They spent five years exclusively on this task, during which time Poland was gradually partitioned by its more powerful neighbours, leading in 1795 to its complete disappearance as an independent state. The King was forced to abdicate and the dealers were left with a royal collection on their hands. The pair devoted the rest of their lives in two parallel tasks. In private they sold individual works from their Polish stock (beautifully displayed at Charlotte Street) and replaced them with further important purchases. In public they sought a home for their complete and intact ‘Royal Collection’, approaching amongst others the Tzar of Russia and the British Government. When it became obvious that they would be unable to sell the collection in its entirety, they began to seek suitable institutions to which to bequeath it, especially after Desenfans’s death in 1807 when Bourgeois became sole owner. In the absence (until 1824) of a British National Gallery, the obvious candidate was the British Museum, but Bourgeois found its trustees too ‘arbitrary’ and ‘aristocratic’ (both loaded words in the era of the French Revolution). Instead he decided to leave his collection to Dulwich College, clearly stating that the paintings should be on public display. Dulwich Picture Gallery was therefore founded by the terms of Sir Francis Bourgeois’s will upon his death in 1811. Thus came into being England’s first public art gallery.
Source: Cornucopia
Date: Not known, but before 2015
Licence: CC BY-NC