Wallace, Sir Richard, Baronet

▪ British art collector

born June 21, 1818, London, Eng.

died July 20, 1890, Paris, France

      British art collector and philanthropist whose name is perpetuated by the famous art collection, the Wallace Collection (q.v.), at Hertford House, London.

      Wallace was a natural son of Viscount Beauchamp, later the 4th marquess of Hertford, and Agnes Jackson, née Wallace. He was educated in Paris and, after the death of the 3rd marquess in 1842, acted as confidential secretary to his father, the 4th marquess, assisting him in the formation of his superb art collection. In 1870 Lord Hertford died, leaving Wallace heir to the bulk of his large fortune, his unentailed property, and all his art collections. The part of these collections that eventually came to form the Wallace Collection at Hertford House owes its character to both men. Lord Hertford assembled most of the 17th- and 18th-century French furniture and minor arts along with the Old Masters and 19th-century French paintings, to which Wallace added the armour and medieval and Renaissance works of art.

      Wallace was created a baronet in 1871 for his services to the English community during the siege of Paris (1870) of the Franco-German War. He was a British commissioner at the Paris Exhibition of 1878 and also a trustee of the National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery and a governor of the National Gallery of Ireland. He sat in Parliament for Lisburn, Ire., from 1873 to 1885, when he retired to Paris. He died without surviving children, and the baronetcy became extinct. His wife, who died in 1897, bequeathed to the British nation those sections of the art collection, then housed on the ground and first floors of Hertford House, that now form the Wallace Collection.

Additional Reading

Donald Mallett, The Greatest Collector: Lord Hertford and the Founding of the Wallace Collection (1979), is a biography.

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