Haberdasher, politician, and art collector.
Wynn Ellis
1790 - 1875
This person is the subject of ongoing research. We have started by researching their relationship to the enslavement of people.
Biographical notes
Summary of activity
Wynn Ellis, born at Oundle, Northamptonshire, was the son of Thomas Ellis and Elizabeth Ordway. In 1812 he established a flourishing business as a haberdasher, hosier and mercer at 16 Ludgate Street. In 1814 he married Mary Maria, daughter of John Smith of Lincoln. From 1831–4 and from 1839–47 he was an advanced Liberal MP for Leicester. On 24 May 1832 he voted for a committee to consider the abolition of slavery.
In 1836 he purchased the manor of Ponsborne Park, Hertfordshire, which he sold in 1875. He also owned Tankerton Tower, near Canterbury, which later came to be known as Whitstable Castle. He died at 30 Cadogan Place, his house in London.
In 1870 he presented to the Gallery style of Salvator Rosa, Tobias and the Angel (NG 811). On his death he left a number of legacies to schools and hospitals, and his collection of pictures to the nation, out of which the Gallery selected 94, with the remainder sold at Christie’s in May, June and July 1876.
Slavery connections
No known connections with slavery.
Abolition connections
On 24 May 1832 he voted for a committee to consider the abolition of slavery.
National Gallery painting connections
Donor: Wynn Ellis presented in 1870: style of Salvator Rosa, Tobias and the Angel (NG 811). The following paintings from his bequest entered the collection in 1876: Ludolf Bakhuizen, A View across a River near Dordrecht (?) (NG1000); Nicolaes Berchem, Mountainous Landscape with Muleteers (NG1004), A Man and a Youth ploughing with Oxen (NG1005), A Peasant playing a Hurdy-Gurdy to a Woman and Child in a Woody Landscape, with Oxen, Sheep and Goats (NG1006); Dirck van den Bergen, Two Calves, a Sheep and a Dun Horse by a Ruin (NG 984); probably by Bernardino da Asola, The Garden of Love (NG930); Jan Both, A Rocky Italian Landscape with Herdsmen and Muleteers (NG956), Muleteers, and a Horseman with an Ox and Goats by a Pool (NG957), A View on the Tiber, near the Ripa Grande, Rome (?) (NG958), Peasants with Mules and Oxen on a Track near a River (NG959); Dirk Bouts, Portrait of a Man (Jan van Winckele?) (NG943); Canaletto, Venice: The Feast Day of Saint Roch (NG937), Venice: A Regatta on the Grand Canal (NG938), Venice: The Doge’s Palace and the Riva degli Schiavoni (NG940), Venice: Palazzo Grimani (NG941), Eton College (NG942); studio of Canaletto, Venice: The Piazzetta from the Molo (NG939); Jan van de Cappelle, Vessels in Light Airs on a River near a Town (NG964), A Dutch Yacht firing a Salute as a Barge pulls away and Many Small Vessels at Anchor (NG965), A River Scene with a Dutch Yacht firing a Salute as Two Barges pull away (NG966), A River Scene with a Large Ferry and Numerous Dutch Vessels at Anchor (NG967); Claude, Landscape with Aeneas at Delos (NG1018); Gonzales Coques, Portrait of a Woman as Saint Agnes (NG1011); Associate of Corneille de Lyon, Portrait of a Man holding a Scroll and Gloves (NG947); Aelbert Cuyp, A Distant View of Dordrecht, with a Milkmaid and Four Cows, and Other Figures (‘The Large Dort’) (NG961), A Distant View of Dordrecht, with a Sleeping Herdsman and Five Cows (‘The Small Dort’) (NG962); Dirck van Delen, An Architectural Fantasy (NG 1010); after Carlo Dolci, The Virgin and Child with Flowers (NG934); Gerrit Dou, Portrait of a Young Woman (NG968); Probably by Willem van Drielenburgh, A Landscape with a View of Dordrecht (NG960); Karel Dujardin, Sheep and Goats (NG 985); Adam Elsheimer, Saint Lawrence prepared for Martyrdom (NG1014); Possibly by Pieter Franchoijs, Portrait of Lucas Fayd'herbe (?) (NG1012); Jan Fyt, Dead Birds in a Landscape (NG1003); Jan Gossaert (Jean Gossart), A Man holding a Glove (NG946); Jean-Baptiste Greuze, A Girl (NG1019), A Child with an Apple (NG1020); Wybrand Hendriks, Fruit, Flowers and Dead Birds (NG1015); Jan van der Heyden, An Architectural Fantasy (NG992), A Farm among Trees (NG993), An Imaginary View of Nijenrode Castle and the Sacristy of Utrecht Cathedral (NG994); Meindert Hobbema, A Woody Landscape with a Cottage (NG995); Jan-Baptist Huysmans, A Cowherd in a Woody Landscape (NG954); Jan van Huysum, Hollyhocks and Other Flowers in a Vase (NG1001); Italian, North, The Interior of a Theatre (NG936); follower of Joos van Cleve, The Virgin and Child with an Augustinian Canoness (NG945); Jan de Lagoor, A Woody Landscape with a Stag Hunt (NG1008); Filippino Lippi, An Angel Adoring (NG927); Lodewijck van Ludick, A River between Rocky Cliffs, with a Waterfall on the left (NG1007); Workshop of Marinus van Reymerswaele, Two Tax-Gatherers (NG944); Gabriel Metsu, Two Men with a Sleeping Woman (NG970); Style of Joos de Momper the Younger, A Music Party before a Village (NG1017); Aert van der Neer, A Frozen River by a Town at Evening (NG969); Follower of Isack van Ostade, An Inn by a Frozen River (NG963); Cornelis van Poelenburgh, Women bathing in a Landscape (NG955); Piero del Pollaiuolo, Apollo and Daphne (NG928); after Raphael, The Madonna and Child (NG929); Style of Salvator Rosa, A Coastal Scene (NG935); Rosso Fiorentino, A Knight of Saint John (NG932); Peter Paul Rubens, A Wagon fording a Stream (NG948); Jacob van Ruisdael, Two Watermills and an Open Sluice at Singraven (NG986), A Torrent in a Mountainous Landscape (NG987), A Road winding between Trees towards a Distant Cottage (NG988), Three Watermills with Washerwomen (NG989), A Landscape with a Ruined Building at the Foot of a Hill by a River (NG991); imitator of Jacob van Ruisdael, A Castle on a Hill by a River (NG996); Cornelis van der Schalcke, An Extensive River Landscape, with Two Sportsmen and their Greyhounds (NG974); Godfried Schalcken, An Old Woman scouring a Pot (NG997), A Woman singing and a Man with a Cittern (NG998), A Candlelight Scene: A Man offering a Gold Chain and Coins to a Girl seated on a Bed (NG999); Johannes Spruyt, Geese and Ducks (NG1013); David Teniers the Younger, A View of a Village with Three Peasants talking in the Foreground (NG950), Peasants playing Bowls outside a Village Inn (NG951); Imitator of David Teniers the Younger, Personification of Autumn (?) (NG953); Probably by David Teniers the Younger, A Gypsy telling a Peasant his Fortune in a Hilly Landscape (NG949); After David Teniers the Younger, A Country Festival near Antwerp (NG952); Titian or Titian workshop, A Boy with a Bird (NG933); Adriaen van de Velde, The Edge of a Wood, with a Sleeping Shepherd, Sheep and Goats (NG982), A Bay Horse, a Cow, a Goat and Three Sheep near a Building (NG983); Willem van de Velde, A Dutch Yacht surrounded by Many Small Vessels, saluting as Two Barges pull alongside (NG978), A Dutch Ship, a Yacht and Smaller Vessels in a Breeze (NG979), Boats pulling out to a Yacht in a Calm (NG980), Three Ships in a Gale (NG981); Studio of Willem van de Velde, Small Dutch Vessels in a Breeze (NG977); Pieter Verbeeck, A White Horse standing by a Sleeping Man (NG1009); Paolo Veronese, The Conversion of Mary Magdalene (NG931); Jacob van Walscappelle, Flowers in a Glass Vase (NG1002); Jan Wijnants, A Landscape with a High Dune and Peasants on a Road (NG971), A Landscape with Two Dead Trees, and Two Sportsmen with Dogs on a Sandy Road (NG972); Philips Wouwerman, A Stream in the Dunes, with Two Bathers (NG973), A Stag Hunt (NG975); Studio of Philips Wouwerman, Calvary attacking Infantry (NG976). A further painting by Sir Peter Lely, Girl with a Parrot was transferred to Tate (N01016).
Former owner: although not part of his bequest, he was a former owner of Sir Joshua Reynolds’s Colonel Tarleton (Colonel Tarleton, q.v.).
Sitter: Wynn Ellis is the subject of a marble bust by Robert William Sievier, which was presented to the NG by H. Churchill in 1878 (NG2239).
Bibliography
S. Harratt, 'ELLIS, Wynn (1790-1875), of 30 Cadogan Place, Mdx', in History of Parliament Trust (ed.), The History of Parliament: British Political, Social & Local History, London 1964-, 1820-1832, https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1820-1832/member/ellis-wynn-1790-1875
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C. Matthew et al. (eds), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford 1992-, https://www.oxforddnb.com/
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J. Turner et al. (eds), Grove Art Online, Oxford 1998-, https://www.oxfordartonline.com/groveart/
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UCL Department of History (ed.), Legacies of British Slave-ownership, London 2020, https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/
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Paintings previously owned by Wynn Ellis
(Showing 3 of 95 works)
The infant cradling a dove to his cheek closely resembles Cupid in two versions of Titian’s Venus and Adonis, dating to around 1560, in Washington and New York. Yet the way in which the picture is painted and the range of colours used are characteristic of Titian’s work of the 1520s.This apparent...
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Imitator of Jacob van Ruisdael
This picture was painted by a seventeenth-century Dutch imitator of Jacob van Ruisdael and is possibly an early work by the artist’s follower Johan van Kessel. It may be based on a lost work by van Ruisdael showing Bentheim Castle, which is on the border between Germany and the Netherlands, altho...
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A little boy or girl leans on a cushion holding an apple. The child is positioned in the extreme foreground of the picture before a dark blank background, the closeness to us creating a sense of immediacy. The intense gaze of the glistening blue eyes and slightly parted lips – which Greuze has pa...
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Style of Salvator Rosa
This picture, inspired by the landscapes of Salvator Rosa, was probably painted by an Italian artist working during the eighteenth century. A rock in the foreground to the right of the figures bears a prominent ‘SR’ monogram – a ruse to encourage potential buyers to believe that the painting was...
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Country peasants and smartly dressed gentlefolk assemble for a feast on the rolling hills outside Antwerp, seen silhouetted on the horizon. Cooks are busy preparing the meal in large cauldrons while birds wheel in the sky above, anticipating the pickings soon to be had. A stone cross carved with...
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A herdsman heads across the scene with his cows to follow the path away to the right. The evening light catches his white shirt and the tops of the tumbling waters of a stream at his side. A slender birch tree seems to cling on to the side of the rocky slope, its tall trunk vanishing into the da...
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Small waves scud across the sea, the boats running before the stiff breeze. In the centre, its white sail straining, is a Statenjacht (state yacht), a vessel used by the ‘States General’, the Dutch chamber of provincial delegates in The Hague. It flies the Dutch colours and the arms of the Provin...
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This is the largest and most elaborate of the pictures by Willem van de Velde the Younger in the National Gallery’s collection. Painted with the artist’s usual accuracy and fine detail, the depiction of a marine occasion fairly common in a seafaring nation like seventeenth-century Holland becomes...
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There is something rather mysterious about this rare – and tiny – landscape by Jan van der Heyden, who specialised in painting urban scenes in a highly precise and realistic way. In this picture he has, instead, thrown a sort of veil over the buildings, a screen of trees which obscures our view.T...
From the 1640s to the 1660s the Low Countries experienced a series of severe winters, and canals and rivers froze hard for weeks at a time. This wintry transformation of the towns and landscapes caught the imagination of many local artists, and Aert van der Neer was one of those who specialised i...
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Probably by David Teniers the Younger
Pictures of mysterious characters dressed in exotic clothing against a background of dangerously steep mountains and distant castles were very popular in seventeenth-century Flanders. The idea of the romantic wanderer caught the imagination, and inspired attractive narrative paintings that were o...
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A young girl in three-quarters view looks up and out of the picture to the left. Her transparent shawl, known as a fichu, covers one shoulder but has fallen off the other. Her white muslin dress is only loosely held up over her chest, an effect enhanced by her bodice having come undone. There was...
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The unknown man in this half-length portrait proudly displays an eight-pointed silver cross suspended from a black cord round his neck, which identifies him as a Knight of the Order of Saint John. His left hand clasps a sword. The pose points to the twin aims of the Order: religious and military...
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This painting is probably a collaboration between Jan Wijnants, who was a specialist landscape painter, and Jan Lingelbach, who added the figures and the animals once the landscape was finished. It was not unusual for painters to work in this way in seventeenth-century Holland.What we see is prob...
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There is a feeling of melancholy about this composition. The sky is dark and oppressive, and the background is dominated by shadowy cliffs. In the right foreground, the fallen birch tree – a common device to help give an impression of depth to a view – hints at the destructive power of nature. Th...
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This, one of van Ruisdael’s most famous paintings, is a bigger version of his An Extensive Landscape with Ruins, also in the National Gallery’s collection. This sizeable picture was almost certainly painted on commission and was designed to hang in a very large room. Its size is matched by the se...
Probably by Willem van Drielenburgh
We see the skyline of Dordrecht, identifiable by the grey bulk of the Grote Kerk (Great Church) and the outlines of two of its watergates. The crenellations of the Vuilpoort (demolished in 1864) are in the centre, the tower of the Groothoofdspoort (which still survives) is on the right.The emphas...
Not on display
This is a landscape full of sunshine, energy and life. The strong sweeping curve of the track dominates the middle of the picture. Two greyhounds bound along while a horseman and his companion chat easily as they go, and in the distance a pedlar with his pack ambles along behind them. The woodlan...
Not on display
There is a rough grandeur in Berchem’s picture. The oxen are fine animals, well muscled and rich in colour. The man is strong, windswept and sunburnt. His massive arms labour at the primitive plough; his shirt is shabby, but gleams white and clean in the sun. He leans back in a huge effort to sho...
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A bearded man gazes out intently from this painting. We don't know who the sitter is, but the cut of his beard and the fashion of his hat and clothes suggest a date towards 1530. The fact that both his doublet and gown are lined with fur probably indicates that the portrait was painted during the...
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A man offers gold coins and jewellery to woman lying on a bed – a carving of Cupid, the god of erotic love, on the bedpost in the foreground removes any doubt that it is an amorous encounter. The glass of wine would also have been associated with licentious behaviour. Whether this is a transactio...
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Style of Joos de Momper the Younger
In an unidentified landscape streaked with the long shadows of evening, a variety of people go about their business. Among the figures are courting couples and a number of gardeners, both suggestive of fertility and fruitfulness. In the front right corner, three women make music. The fourth membe...
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Picked out in the glow of a soft evening light, a sleepy toddler lies on his mother’s lap, his eyes half closed, one chubby arm dangling at his side. His mother smiles down at him, the last of the sun catching her wide brow and her white shawl. Beside them a man leans forward with a smile, lullin...
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In the seventeenth century, several Dutch artists went to Rome and brought back paintings and sketches. They, and others like van Ludick, used these works as a basis for imaginary paintings of the Italian landscape with a mountainous background and a softly lit Mediterranean sky. They proved very...
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This Dutch river mouth is a busy place. Vessels of all kinds are moored close to us, and others move across the water further out to sea. Jan van de Cappelle has broken up the vast sky with moving clouds that cast deep shadows in the foreground and with geometric – almost abstract – shapes made b...
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The boats crowded together on either side of Jan van de Cappelle’s painting are tough, working craft, made to carry goods and people along the coastline and the many waterways of Holland. Although the vessels are not glamorous in themselves, van de Cappelle has exaggerated the height of the masts...
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A rutted road leads into a wood and winds round to the right and over a rise to disappear. This is an often repeated theme in Jacob van Ruisdael’s early paintings – scenes of the Dutch countryside designed to please busy city dwellers wanting a moment of tranquillity in the home, or a reminder of...
The tranquillity of the Campagna – the countryside around Rome – stretches far into the distance under a soft golden light. Muleteers, who lived by transporting goods on the backs of their patient mules, move at a leisurely pace across the mountainous landscape, its paths winding in and out of ro...
Not on display
Jan van de Cappelle’s sea is flat calm and luminous – even the few boats that appear to be moving hardly disturb the still reflections. But there’s a sense of drama in the picture, unusual for the artist. Clouds threaten, and a fitful sun breaks through. The barge in the foreground on the right i...
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A group of fashionably dressed aristocrats canter and prance round a stag at bay, threatened by hounds in for the kill. Other riders gallop up or splash through the shallow river to join in the excitement, hat feathers flying and horns whooping. The horses in particular are beautifully painted in...
Far from the soft, rolling sand dunes at many seaside places, those in Wouwerman’s painting are craggy with rocks here and there. The stark outline of the broken fence against the sky seems forbidding, and the house up on the left bank, gable end facing us, seems to shut us out.Individual parts o...
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A mountain top shrouded in mist, a bubbling torrent of water tumbling headlong down a rocky hillside, a lone tree piercing the clouds – this was one of the favourite themes of the great Dutch landscape artist Jacob van Ruisdael during the middle of the seventeenth century. Inspired by drawings ma...
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Ludolf Bakhuizen rarely made his seas calm or sunlit. His is a northern sea with boats scudding before the wind, evoking the sound of straining timbers and slapping rigging.The vessel speeding towards the distant man-of-war (battleship) is a snaauwschip – a dispatch boat. The man-of-war is at anc...
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David Teniers painted caricatures in imaginary landscapes, a background to his comic characters. Here, three men stand facing each other in a circle. One reaches into an inner pocket and looks with a shifty half-smile at the man in the blue coat, whose straight back hints at a military background...
Not on display
Jan Both was one of a group of Dutch artists that made the long and often dangerous journey across the Alps to Italy, said at the time to be the heart of great painting. He stayed for ten years, becoming a leader in the development of Dutch Italianate landscape showing hardy peasants against soft...
Not on display
A lone driver steers his horses and wagon down a steep bank into what seems like a deep ford. It’s an idyllic scene evoking afternoon light filtering through woodland, and the subject is typical of Rubens’s burst of interest in landscape painting in the last five years of his life. Rather than pa...
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In this strange little picture, Pieter Verbeeck appears to be telling us a story, though it’s impossible to say what it is. A man, apparently a vagrant, sleeps under a tree with his dog. A patient horse waits for them, its rein hanging down loose close to the man’s hand. Another man appears over...
Not on display
This painting sets out to tease us: we are clearly invited to wonder about the nature of the relationship between the two figures. They sit close and seem deeply comfortable in each other’s presence; there is a hint of embarrassment in the young woman’s reaction to our gaze. She looks up slightly...
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A rutted cart track leads straight into the middle of the picture. A group of figures are caught in a patch of sunlight while a cottage merges into the shadows. A frieze of trees stands out against a sunny glade and a cloudy sky beyond. Many of Hobbema’s landscapes were composed around these spec...
Not on display
This painting has been darkened by varnish, making the woods in the foreground so murky and the distant landscape so misty that the reflection created by trees in the water seems startlingly bright. The light catching the terrified stag and hind running from the hounds seems silvery – almost like...
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This painting is a damaged fragment of a larger composition by the Florentine painter Filippino Lippi. The original appearance of the complete picture may be echoed in a copy that survives in a private collection, which shows the Virgin Mary and infant Christ flanked by two angels.Our fragment co...
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This is a picture of an idealised city square, carefully painted to make sure that the perspectives, proportions and the effects of light and shade make it look as realistic as possible. Dirck van Delen specialised in painting buildings and imaginary architectural views, and the attention to such...
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Jan van der Heyden had an outstanding ability to make buildings seem almost photographically real (at least, that’s how we might describe it today). He worked with extraordinary delicacy and precision, taking the trouble to delineate and shade the finest details of stone and brickwork and the pla...
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In seventeenth-century Holland, artists and viewers alike were fascinated by the Dutch landscape. Pictures of it take many forms – from the down-to-earth farmstead to the softly glowing views inspired by the Italian landscape – but because of the flat terrain, many convey the sense of vast space...
Not on display
Although he liked to paint scenes that looked highly realistic, Jan van der Heyden made adjustments to what he saw, and often created entirely imaginary scenes. Sometimes he would compose fantasy buildings, combining elements from more than one structure. Here his approach is slightly different....
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Follower of Isack van Ostade
In the Dutch Republic at this time, paintings were a means of entertainment – scenes of outdoor life were meant to hold moments of interest that had to be teased out. Although it’s not immediately evident, this picture does exactly that.The huge expanse of sky is grey; the pub roof is almost fall...
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This painting evokes a sense of the calm and simplicity of everyday routine and of the virtue of labour as the old woman absorbs herself in polishing the glowing brass of a large pan. But other objects on the sill give her scouring a different, darker significance and clearly identify the picture...
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Adriaen van de Velde’s pastoral scenes are, like this one, almost always tranquil and serene. They were designed to be easy to live with, and to give city dwellers a sense of being in touch with the countryside and traditional life. But although the paintings are tranquil there’s a sense of energ...
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This tiny picture has grand themes: the rivalry of the gods and the power and danger of love. Its story comes from the Metamorphoses, by the Roman poet Ovid. Cupid, taking revenge on Apollo for his teasing, struck the god with a golden arrow of love, igniting a fierce desire for Daphne – but stru...
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During the seventeenth century, the Dutch Republic was frequently at war, often with England. It’s possible that this is a picture of a fleet preparing for battle.The sea is quiet, but there is a sense of urgency in the scene. A crowd of small boats pull out from the shore, the men rowing powerfu...
Not on display
Studio of Philips Wouwerman
Philips Wouwerman was famous in his time for his skill at depicting horses in many different situations – at rest in the stable, being shod in the forge, out hunting or, as here, in the frenzy of battle. In what is a relatively small painting – not by Wouwerman himself but produced in his studio...
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Reynolds portrays Banastre Tarleton (1754–1833) aged 27, in action as commandant of the British Legion cavalry in the War of American Independence. Tarleton was famed for his reckless bravery and savagery, as well as for his vanity. He later became MP for Liverpool and defended the slave trade, o...
Jan Fyt was an extremely successful painter of bird and animal still-life pictures, using a light, frothy style of brushwork peculiar to him. Here, he has piled up the birds' bodies – a brace of partridges alongside a greenfinch, chaffinch, brambling, robin and quail – in a pyramid. The evening s...
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This view is from the bank of the River Thames, looking across a sprawling meadow towards Eton College on the horizon. A shady glade gives way to a softly lit landscape, with folk enjoying the summer’s day – a family group are picnicking while other people fish and boat nearby. A finely painted t...
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The luxuriant flowers in van Walscapelle’s painting loom out of the darkness. A single shaft of light makes them glow. His painting seems alive and moving – nature is busy. The flowers appear to nod as if a breeze has passed through, leaving leaves trailing, the petals of the tulip dropping, a ca...
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Wybrand Hendriks has piled up his bouquet of fruit and flowers against a soft, green background of woodland trees, till it tips sideways and tumbles down the canvas on a steep diagonal, ending in the forms of the two dead birds. They are snipe, game birds to be eaten. An exotic pineapple sits at...
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Johannes Spruyt has placed his handsome water birds against a stormy sky. Wind disturbs the grass and stunted trees behind them – perhaps to emphasise that, although these are farm animals, they are healthy specimens, hardy and resilient against the weather.The white goose beats its wings and his...
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Pale flowers glow in a soft light against the dark wall of an anonymous room. Pink hollyhocks flaunt dozens of tiny petals. Delicate white poppies face out towards us, the yellow pistil holding our gaze like a tiny eye. Above them a tall stem curves upwards, fat little buds clinging on to it, the...
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Aeneas, prince of Troy, dressed here in an orange cloak, left his native city and arrived with his father, son, and companions on the island of Delos, home of the sun god Apollo. Anius, the King of Delos, dressed in white, gestures to an olive and palm in the centre of the painting, two trees sac...
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Neither the soft, hazy light of this picture nor its mountain path leading up through birch trees is typical of a seventeenth-century Dutch landscape painting. Such a picture would show wide, flat countryside, lit with a cool northern light. This is an imaginary view based on a Dutch artist’s exp...
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Autumnal colours and a soft sky lend a certain melancholy to a vast landscape. The high cliff and spindly birch trees on one side and a dark cluster of undergrowth on the other narrow the view, almost hypnotic in its stillness. The figures in the foreground seem almost incidental but flashes of w...
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Teniers’s imaginary landscape shows peasants at their leisure. The sheep on the far side of the river enjoy the best of the fitful sunshine, but with a few strokes of the brush Teniers created a shower of rain over the substantial village and the church in the distance.The men in the foreground p...
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The sun sinks behind a steep Italian hillside, casting a soft, gold light over a meandering river in the valley below. But the chill of evening is perhaps settling in. Huddled in his coat, his hat well down over his ears, a man rides his mule side-saddle.Behind them, a peasant drives two oxen dow...
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Imitator of David Teniers the Younger
This painting of a man wearing a jaunty, feathered cap and holding up a glass of beer, a refill jug in his other hand, has historically been called ‘The Toper’. This was a popular term for a drinker or a drunkard, and a relatively common subject in Dutch and Flemish painting. However, it is possi...
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A fair-haired man stands in an interior, gazing past us. Through the window behind him we can see a landscape with a church in the distance. The date on the back wall makes this the earliest datable – and in fact the only dated painting – by Bouts, and the earliest dated portrait to include an op...
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Associate of Corneille de Lyon
A middle-aged man with a luxuriant beard gazes past us into the distance. He holds a scroll in one hand and lays the other across a pair of brown leather gloves which rest on a table. His black hat has lappets, turned up and fastened to the brim; in cold weather they could have been let down over...
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A finely dressed young woman gazes assuredly out at the viewer. The distinct shape of her nose, the turn of her mouth and her faintly dimpled chin reveal that this is a portrait, though the sitter’s identity is unknown. She is shown in the guise of Saint Agnes, with the saint’s attributes of a la...
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This painting has in the past been described as a portrait of the painter’s wife, but we now know Gerrit Dou never married. Perhaps it was something about the intimacy and sensitivity of this tiny image which led people to assume that there was a relationship between the artist and the sitter.Tho...
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Possibly by Pieter Franchoijs
We can sense the confidence and energy of the man in this portrait. He is positioned slightly higher than the viewer, so we have to look up at him; he returns our gaze with a direct, rather aloof look in his eyes. His pose seems to reflect his vitality and a sense of self-belief: there is a suren...
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On the orders of the pope, Saint Lawrence, a deacon of the early Christian Church, distributed church property to the poor in Rome. When the Roman authorities discovered what he was doing, they ordered him to hand over the treasures to the city. He refused, and when pressed to give up his Christi...
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Dujardin’s animals are alive and realistic. They’re softly lit, the white wool of the sheep almost glowing in the evening sun; their solid, rounded forms are echoed in the puffy white clouds overhead. The flesh under the wool appears plump and heavy, and the skilled painting of the wool itself ma...
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Studio of Willem van de Velde
Two sailing boats – a flat-bottomed kaag and smaller, more open weyschuit, which had a similar rig – are shown in the foreground. They appear to be at the mouth of a harbour or estuary. One sails towards and the other away from a black buoy. This is a similar composition to another van de Velde p...
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This is one of Veronese’s earliest works, painted when he was about 18, probably for a noble patron in Verona. The lighting from the right suggests that it was made for a specific location, perhaps the side wall of a chapel.The painting’s subject has been the matter of much debate but it is now b...
A shepherd sleeps on a bank on the edge of a wood, his dog curled up beside him and his crook laid carefully on the grass. The sun is bright but gives a cool light and seemingly little heat. The sky is cloudless – a crisp, clear blue – and the feathery new leaves of the trees are outlined sharply...
Not on display
Probably by Bernardino da Asola
Two elegantly dressed couples have been making music on the banks of a small stream. The young man in the foreground pauses from playing his fiddle to watch the amorous couple on the other bank. The lady reclines beside her lover, and a lute and music lie abandoned on the grass. Music and playing...
Not on display
This painting is more likely to be an imaginary scene than a view of a theatre that actually existed. It may have been inspired by stage designs by the Bibiena family from Bologna, who were known for their highly ornate sets produced for festivities at many European courts, especially the Hapsbur...
Not on display
Cows often feature in pastoral landscapes, but it is rare for them to be given quite such heroic status as the four monumental brown beasts which dominate the foreground of this large canvas. They relegate the shepherd to the hill and the milkmaid, who funnels the results of her labour into a bra...
Not on display
After Raphael
This is a copy of Raphael’s Virgin and Child known as ‘The Bridgewater Madonna’. The original is on loan to the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh from the Duke of Sutherland’s collection.The copy is similar in size and in most colours and follows Raphael’s style closely, making it difficult...
Not on display
This painting is very similar to but roughly half the size of another landscape by Aelbert Cuyp, also in the National Gallery’s collection: A Distant View of Dordrecht, with a Milkmaid and Four Cows, and Other Figures. We don't know which was painted first but presumably one of Cuyp’s customers s...
Not on display
Follower of Joos van Cleve
A woman dressed in the white habit of an Augustinian canoness kneels in front of the Virgin Mary and Christ. Mary is seated on a low, L-shaped brick wall topped with turf, with Christ perched on her knee. He holds a string of red beads with a gold tassel on one end and a yellow ring – perhaps a t...
Not on display
After Carlo Dolci
In this intimate painting the Virgin Mary holds a branch of lilies entwined with carnations in her left hand and supports the Christ Child with her right. He raises one hand in blessing, and holds a rose in the other. The rose and lily are commonly associated with the Virgin’s purity. More flower...
Not on display
The merchant ships we see here are in some peril. The wind is so strong that they have been forced to take down their sails and are drifting at the mercy of the gale and the surging sea. Our attention is focused on the nearest ship, a man-of-war, as it ploughs into a breaking wave. A sudden shaft...
Not on display
Jacob van Ruisdael’s washerwomen are strong and sturdy. One stands in the river up to her ankles and raises a stick to beat the linen she’s washing, while her companion stoops to rinse a cloth. Behind them a heap of dirty washing awaits the attention of their brawny arms. Their dog lifts his head...
Not on display
Style of Salvator Rosa
In the apocryphal Book of Tobit, Tobias travels to the city of Media to collect a debt for his blind father, Tobit, accompanied by the Archangel Raphael. When Tobias stops beside the river Tigris, a fish tries to devour him. Raphael directs him to remove the fish’s heart, liver and gall bladder;...
Not on display
Dirck van den Bergen was a pupil of the landscape and animal painter Adriaen van de Velde. A young apprentice would usually work in the manner of their master for a while, though most artists eventually broke away from their teacher’s example or developed their individual version of it. Van den B...
Not on display
The objects on the table – an innkeeper’s slate, playing cards, a pipe, a silver cup, a tankard and a backgammon box – imply that this is a tavern. The sleeping woman might be the innkeeper’s wife, a barmaid or, possibly, a prostitute, and the painting is drawing attention to her vices. Cards and...
Workshop of Marinus van Reymerswale
Two strikingly ugly men in extraordinary clothing are seated at a table in a panelled interior. One writes in a ledger, the other – his features contorted into a sneer – grasps at a pile of coins. Documents, some of them legible, are piled on a cupboard behind the pair.Marinus van Reymerswale and...
On display elsewhere
The wind seems to chase the clouds across this painting, letting through a fitful sun to light up the tumbling water for one moment. In another it will be gone, falling instead on the sheep on the steep hillside across the valley, perhaps, or the distant windmill and church steeple beyond. The ma...
This exhilarating scene shows the annual regatta (boat race) along Venice’s Grand Canal, and Canaletto has successfully captured the crowd’s excitement as the competitors skilfully manoeuvre their craft up the canal. Although many of the figures in the foreground have their backs to us, we still...
Not on display
This work is almost a portrait of a building: the imposing facade of the Palazzo Grimani fills nearly the entire composition. Boatmen emerge from the left and right just in front of us, adding a sense of movement, while figures composed of dots and daubs of paint stand on the palace’s steps.Palaz...
Not on display
Beneath a sky of swirling cloud and warm sunlight, we take in a view of the Doge’s Palace, one of the best-known buildings in Venice. It overlooks a promenade known as the Riva degli Schiavoni and the basin of San Marco.Canaletto has given the scene a sense of tranquillity and calm. In the foregr...
A crowd watches as state dignitaries and foreign ambassadors emerge from the church of San Rocco on the right of this painting. They have just attended a mass in honour of Saint Roch as part of the saint’s feast day, which was held in Venice every year on 16 August to celebrate his role in bringi...
Studio of Canaletto
This view is of the Piazzetta, an area between the Piazza San Marco and the waterfront (known as the Molo). Elegantly dressed Venetians and foreign visitors – like the trio at the bottom right – mill around the square, while government officials in black robes emerge from the Doge’s Palace.Beyond...
Not on display
In the grey early light of morning, on a glassy sea, the boats in van de Cappelle’s painting hardly seem to move. There’s no wind, the sails are hardly filled, nothing disturbs the water. Even the clouds seem buoyed up in the air like balloons bouncing along gently in the vast sky.Close to us, an...
Not on display
For those living in Utrecht in the 1630s, this painting must have seemed like a window onto an exotic world. A crowd of naked women pose elegantly while they talk and bathe in a river. Behind them loom the overgrown tower and arches of a Roman ruin, while the bright morning sky glows behind the f...
Not on display
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Paintings featuring Wynn Ellis
Wynn Ellis MP (1790–1875) was the National Gallery’s greatest benefactor in the second half of the nineteenth century. He made his fortune in the silk trade and sat in the House of Commons as Liberal MP for Leicester from 1831 to 1834.He began buying paintings in the mid-1820s and had a strong li...
Not on display