Wallace Collection

The Wallace Collection, displayed at Hertford House, the main London town house of its former owners, is a national museum, just a few minutes walk from Oxford Street. The First Marquess of Hertford's souvenirs from his grand tour of Europe include works by Canaletto. The Second Marquess added French furniture and Sèvres porcelain. The art collector and philanthropist Sir Richard Wallace travelled through France and Italy, in search of paintings and sculpture. The collection of fine and decorative artworks, was bequeathed to the government in 1897. Art objects include gold boxes and goldsmiths' work, silver and base metalwork, jewellery, Meissen porcelain, enamels, glass, hardstone carvings and illuminated manuscript cuttings. There is also a collection of Gothic armour.

List of Paintings

English Portrait

Mrs Mary Robinson (1783 - 1784 ) - Joshua Reynolds.
Margaret, Countess of Blessington (1822) - Thomas Lawrence. The portrait was bought by the Captain Richard Seymour-Conway, 4th Marquess of Hertford, the father of Richard Wallace, in 1849 at the sale of the contents of Gore House, Kensington.

Romanticism

Rebecca and Brian de Bois-Guilbert (1828) - Léon Cogniet depicted the abduction of Rebecca by the Templar de Bois-Guilbert with the Norman castle of Torquilstone engulfed in flames. The story is from the Medieval Romance Ivanhoe.
The Lion Hunt (1836) - Horace Vernet. The scene shown in The Lion Hunt seems to have been a recollection of his first trip to Algeria in 1833: when the picture was exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1836 it was given the title Hunt in the Sahara Desert 28 May 1833.
A Charge of Cuirassiers (c. 1822 - 1823) - Théodore Géricault.

Juste milieu - Paul Delaroche

Joan of Arc in Prison - Delaroche's picture is set in a Rouen prison where Henry Beaufort, Cardinal of Winchester is trying to coerce her confession.
Edward V and the Duke of York in the Tower (Les enfants d’Edouard) is a reduced replica of a much larger picture of "The Princes in the Tower" now owned by the Louvre Museum. Delaroche's source was presumably Shakespeare's Richard III with King Edward V of England and his brother, Richard of Shrewsbury, 1st Duke of York imprisoned in the Tower of London.
The Assassination of the duc de Guise (1832). A watercolour version, with minor variations, of the oil painting, dated 1834, which was exhibited to great popular acclaim at the Paris Salon of 1835 (now Chantilly, Musée Condé). Henri de Lorraine, duc de Guise (1550-88), leader of the Catholic League, was murdered by followers of Henri III in the king’s bedroom at the château de Blois on 23 December 1588.

Classical

Judith with the Head of Holofernes (c. 1510) - Domenico Beccafumi's picture, in the Wallace Collection, is one of a series of three panels, each depicting famous heroines of antiquity. The other two panels in Bayonne show Sophonisba and Cleopatra.
A Dance to the Music of Time (c.1634 to 1636) - Nicolas Poussin.
The Shepherd Paris - Sir Anthony van Dyck.

Vedute - Canaletto

Venice: the Riva degli Schiavoni (c. 1740 to 1745) depicts the view from the Venetian Lagoon. Gondolas are moored along the principal waterfront of Venice. A temporary hut is on the left side of the Rio del Palazzo, next to the Doge's Palace The columns of San Todaro and of the Lion of Saint Mark stand on the Piazzetta in front of the palace. The Prison is on the far side of the Ponte della Paglia (bridge of straw).
Venice: the Bacino di San Marco from San Giorgio Maggiore (c. 1735 to 1744) is an attractive, clearly identifiable view of a type calculated to appeal to the Grand Tourist, with picturesque elements of local colour reinforcing the idea of Venice as an exciting cosmopolitan centre.

Dutch genre painting

Interior with Peasants (1663) - Adriaen van Ostade.
The Village Alchemist (Early 1660's) - Jan Steen.

Landscape

Landscape with Apollo and Mercury (1660) - Claude Lorrain. Apollo, god of the sun, sits with his dog. Mercury runs across a bridge, having stolen Apollo's cattle. The subject is taken from Book II of Ovid's Metamorphoses.
Herdsmen with their Cattle - Paulus Potter.
A Ruin on the Bank of a River - Meindert Hobbema.
The Rainbow Landscape (c. 1636) - Peter Paul Rubens, a representation of the view from the château of Het Steen, situated between Brussels and Antwerp in Belgium. Rubens added a light-dark contrast: with colour and tone, moving from light and bright on the left-hand-side to dark and sombre on the right. The rainbow connects the distant background with its windmills and yellow fields of hay to the darkness and shadows of the woods.

Spanish Baroque

The Charity of Saint Thomas of Villanueva (c. 1670) - Bartolomé-Esteban Murillo.
Prince Baltasar Carlos in Silver (1632-1633) - The son of Philip IV, King of Spain, stands besides a hat on a cushion in the portrait by Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez.

French Rococo Style

Fête galante - Jean-Baptiste Pater (1695 - 1736).
A Girl in a Kitchen - Nicolas Lancret
Fête in a Park - Jean-Antoine Watteau.
Daphnis and Chloe - François Boucher.
The Swing (1767) is the most famous painting by Jean-Honore Fragonard. It became an immediate success, not merely for its technical excellence, but for the scandal behind it. To many, it embodies the entire spirit of the ancien regime on the eve of the revolution.

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