The Wallace Collection is a venerable 110 years old today. We pay tribute.
Wow. The Wallace Collection is 110 years old today. Well a hearty congratulations is due from all of us here at Spoonfed – we'll almost certainly be dedicating this week's instalment of Cake Thursday to the venerable old institution.
It was first established way back in 1897 by Richard Seymour-Conway, 4th Marquess of Hertford, an important art collector who spent most of his life in Paris. When he died, the house and its contents passed to his illegitimate son Sir Richard Wallace – then, when he too died, the whole collection was bequeathed to the nation by his widow, and the Wallace Collection opened to the public in 1900.
The Wallace Collection is today a discreet but much-loved museum, with a world-famous range of art from the 15th to the 19th centuries, as well as assorted French 18th century paintings, furniture, suits of armour and porcelain. There are also works on permanent display by the likes of Titian, Rembrandt, Vernet and Velazquez.
The Wallace Collection hit the headlines back in 2009 with the exhibition of No Love Lost, a series of paintings by notorious YBA shark-pickler Damien Hirst. The works received a near-universal mauling and perhaps the exhibition may now be seen as the definite death-knell of '90s YBA heyday. The paintings, however, found an unlikely champion in old enemy and co-founder of the Stuckists, Charles Thomson, who stated that, "he is not a formal member of the movement, but in art historical terms, Damien Hirst is a Stuckist".
However posterity judges that one exhibition, it attracted a new crowd of visitors to the occasionally (and unjustly) overlooked institution. Happy birthday Wallace Collection! Here's to another 110 years.
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