When the National Gallery of Ireland opened in 1864 it had 112 paintings, today there are about 14,000.
A great debt of gratitude is owed to benefactors who have bequeathed their collections. The Dowager Lady Milltown of Russborough House gave 223 paintings, 48 pieces of sculpture, 33 engravings, silver, furniture and a library in 1897. Henry Vaughan left thirty-one Turner watercolours stipulating they could only be shown in January to preserve them from light damage. Hugh Lane, who died on the Lusitania in 1915, left his large collection of pictures and an endowment fund. George Bernard Shaw left a share of his royalties. Sir Alfred Beit, then the owner of Russborough, gave seventeen masterpieces in 1987. I am just skimming the cream of the long list of benefactors and this is reflected in many other galleries around the world.
Closer to home (for me) the National Portrait Gallery in London was the recipient of the Countess of Littlehampton’s outstanding collection built up over seven centuries at Draynflete Abbey. Her generosity was perhaps not unconnected with a big bill for Death Duties which could be offset against the gift. Should you be mulling a similar bequest be aware that the larger the gallery’s collection the less likely it is that your pictures will be hung and be seen by the public. There was an Evie Hone on display at Tate Britain but now it is in storage. It is smart to leave a collection to a provincial gallery where it will be on show and cherished. This is the case at the Pallant House Gallery in Chichester.
The Littlehampton Bequest dates back to the 1970s when Roy Strong was director of the NPG and he takes up the story of the Littlehampton Bequest. “Few collections representative of the whole history of English portraiture can rival that of the Littlehamptons of Draynflete. Van Dyck and Lely, Reynolds and Gainsborough, Romney and Lawrence, Burne-Jones and Millais, Sargent and Hockney are but a few of the artists whose work adds lustre to a collection notable above all for its richness in the likenesses of those who have shaped this island’s history. The Littlehampton Bequest therefore rightly constitutes, in one magnificent gesture, the most significant addition to the National Portrait Gallery’s holdings since the last war. Thanks to the enthusiastic persistence of the Countess of Littlehampton in her negotiations with Her Majesty’s Government (and much to the relief of the Editor of the letters page of The Times) the Littlehampton Collection has passed intact to the nation. It is of course greatly to be lamented that space will not as yet permit even a temporary display of these historic treasures … It remains for me to say how indebted the Trustees are to Mr Osbert Lancaster for recording for us the results of his researches into the Littlehampton family and their portraits.” (Roy Strong, National Portrait Gallery, foreword to The Littlehampton Bequest, Osbert Lancaster)
“Until recently this splendid picture, a late work of Peter Tillman’s, hung in the harness-room at Draynflete Abbey, where it had become so begrimed that the figures were no longer readily identifiable. Indeed, in the old hand-list, it is catalogued as Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort at the Aldershot Review. When, on the instructions of the present Countess, it was taken down and carefully cleaned, it was discovered to be a portrait group of the 1st Earl, his wife and elder son in the livery of the Draynflete Hunt outside the great gates of the Park, of which each pier bears the proud crest of the Courantsdairs, a Saracen’s Head proper, with, in the background, Hawksmoor’s triumphal column, erected to commemorate the Glorious Revolution of 1688.” (Osbert Lancaster)
