The Agony And The Ecstasy

A small group of paintings demonstrates how important a regional collection can be.

- Mary Miers

IN style, display and location, the Wallace Collection in London and the Bowes Museum in Co Durham might appear to have little in common. Yet the two museums share much that makes them ideal partners—both for collaborating on small, focused exhibitions such as this one and for furthering research and scholarship.

Each owes its existence to a scion of the British aristocracy, who lived in Paris in the mid 19th century and built up a collection that included riches that had recently come out of Spain and were being sold in Paris and London.

The 4th Marquess of Hertford, whose collection would be bequeathed to the nation by the widow of his illegitimate son, Sir Richard Wallace, in 1897, reflected in his early collecting a taste for the Golden Age of Spanish painting, then highly fashionable. Armed with an immense fortune, the reclusive connoisseur began to buy up expensive works, notably, from 1843, paintings by the most desirable Spanish master, Murillo, followed by other artists such as Velázquez and Cano.