The Tabley House Collection is owned by the University of Manchester and is housed in the Grade I listed Tabley House, designed by John Carr of York. The collection was put together by the Leicester family who owned the Tabley estate from the late thirteenth century until 1975. At the core of the collection are the Regency paintings commissioned by Sir John Leicester, who became the first Lord de Tabley. He took the decision, remarkable at the time, to collect modern British art, this meant Turner and Turner's contemporaries. The paintings are often hung where the artists wanted them to be seen to achieve their greatest effect, and they are viewed with the furniture and furnishings they were meant to be seen against. Seen in the context of the house and its owners, the Tabley House Collection is a rare survival of a family's painting collection in its original surroundings.