Nottingham City Museums & Galleries' collection covers British and European oil paintings, watercolours, drawings, prints and sculpture ranging in date from the eleventh century to the present day.

The collection has been growing since the opening of the Castle Museum in 1878 with many of the more important items being acquired from several large bequests. Collections of contemporary photography and contemporary fine art textiles have been developed recently via the Contemporary Art Society’s Special Collections Scheme. Sculpture includes the most important collection of medieval alabasters outside of the Victoria and Albert Museum and a small but important group of sculptures by Jacob Epstein.

Highlights of the painting collection include: a group of seventeenth-century Dutch and Northern European paintings; paintings by important Nottingham artists Paul Sandby, Richard Parkes Bonington, Thomas Barber, John Rawson Walker and Henry Dawson; a twentieth-century British collection including works by William Nicholson, Ben Nicholson, Winifred Nicholson, Dame Laura Knight, Harold Knight, Edward Burra, Edward Wadsworth and Tristram Hillier, Mathew Smith, L. S. Lowry, Ivon Hitchens and Stanley Spencer.