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6
November 2003 – 4 January 2004
 Edmund
Dulac: Sir Claude Phillips: La Legende de Joseph
2003
is the centenary of Britain’s leading art charity, the National
Art Collections Fund (the Art Fund). The Art Fund assists museums in purchasing
new works of art, and helps to stop art treasures leaving Britain. It
was based at Hertford House (now the home of the Wallace Collection) from
1919 – 1975, and this special exhibition celebrates the close association
between the Art Fund and the Wallace Collection, as well as some of the
Fund’s great achievements during its time at Hertford House.
Through
photographs and original documents it will trace the history of the Fund,
from its humble beginnings in 1903, when a small group of art lovers met
at Hertford House to discuss setting up an organisation to stop art treasures
from leaving Britain, and help British Museums beat off increasing competition
from foreign museums and collectors. Now, 100 years on, it is a national
organisation playing a very important part in assisting numerous museums
to acquire an enormous range of objects, from paintings and drawings by
the greatest European masters to decorative arts, antiquities, Japanese
prints and African sculptures. Among the many masterpieces with which
it was associated between 1919 and 1975, were the Wilton Diptych, Titian’s
Vendramin Family and Leonardo’s cartoon of The Virgin and Child
with St. Anne and St. John, all now – thanks in no small measure
to the Fund - to be seen on the walls of the National Gallery.
The
exhibition will include some fascinating insights into how some of these
marvellous objects were acquired, as well as a small selection of eighteenth-century
French objects (of particular relevance to the Wallace Collection) which
were acquired by British museums with the Art Fund’s help in the
period 1919-75. These will be generously lent by the Victoria and Albert
Museum and the Courtauld Institute Gallery in London, the Fitzwilliam
Museum, Cambridge, and the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. There will also be
works of art – drawings, frames and miniatures – donated by
the Art Fund to Hertford House to enhance the archives and display of
the Wallace Collection (which by the terms of Lady Wallace’s will
does not add to its main collections).
Admission
to both the Exhibition and the Wallace Collection is free
Opening Times: Monday – Saturday 10am – 5pm: Sunday
12 noon – 5pm
For
further information please contact Zoë Schoon
zoe.schoon@wallacecollection.org
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