No. 1 Royal Crescent was the first house built in the Royal Crescent, John Wood the Younger’s masterpiece of Palladian architecture. It is now a Georgian House Museum administered by Bath Preservation Trust. The house was generously presented to the Trust in 1968 by Major Bernard Cayzer and has been accurately furnished and decorated to recreate a picture of fashionable life in 18th-century Bath. The paintings have been selected to reflect the City’s flourishing art market, when visitors provided a regularly changing source of commissions for portrait painters, such as the portrait of the celebrated poet Alexander Pope. Others depict sitters particularly associated with Bath, such as William Hoare’s portrait of Ralph Allen, the businessman and philanthropist whose partnership with architect John Wood the Elder transformed the City. The paintings, displayed in their accurate domestic setting, enhance this vivid picture of life during Bath’s most elegant era. Because many paintings are on loan the displays may change occasionally and visitors are advised to contact the Museum to confirm information about specific works.