Royal Pavilion & Museums Trust, Brighton & Hove
The Royal Pavilion & Museums Trust’s combined fine art collection ranges from the late fifteenth century to the present – around 1,500 oil paintings, 4,000 watercolours and drawings, and over 10,000 prints. The collection dates back to 1851, and Brighton Museum and Art Gallery was opened on Church Street in 1873, with one of the earliest purpose-built municipal picture galleries in the country. New paintings were purchased or donated in a series of bequests. Henry Willett’s 1903 gift included The Raising of Lazarus by Jan Lievens, which once hung in the home of Rembrandt. In 1997, the collection was integrated with that of Hove Museum & Art Gallery, which had acquired a significant collection by artists of the Camden Town School and paintings by the likes of Hilda Carline, Duncan Grant and Gilbert Spencer. Today the combined collection features works by Zoffany, Angelica Kauffmann, Hogarth, Gainsborough, William Blake, J. M. W. Turner, John Constable, Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Samuel Palmer, Rosa Bonheur, Glyn Philpot, Walter Sickert, Vanessa Bell, Paul Nash, Graham Sutherland, Jacob Epstein and Stanley Spencer.