COLLECTIONS OF PICTURES BELONGING TO THE TRUSTEES OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM, BUT DEPOSITED IN THE NATIONAL GALLERY.
(XXXIV)
1823. The Beaumont Gallery.
Collected by Sir George Howland Beaumont (Died 7 February, 1827); Given by the Collector in 1823 to the British Museum, on condition of its usufructuary retention, during his lifetime. Deposited in the National Gallery, under terms of arrangement, after the Collector’s death.
(XXXV)
1830. The Holwell-Carr Gallery.
Collected by the Reverend William Holwell Carr (Died 24 December, 1830), and by the Collector bequeathed to the British Museum. Deposited under arrangements similar to those adopted for the Beaumont Pictures in the National Gallery.
These are the primary Accession-Collections that came to the British Museum, during the first seventy years which elapsed after its public opening (January, 1759). They form a noble monument alike of the liberality and public spirit of individual Englishmen, and of the fidelity of the Trustees to the charge committed to them as a body. And the reader will hardly have failed to notice how remarkable a proportion of the most munificent of the Benefactors of the institution were, previously to their gifts, numbered amongst its Trustees.
If the liberality of Parliament failed to be elicited in due correspondency—in respect either to the amount or the frequency of its grants—to that of individuals, the failure is rarely, if ever, ascribable to oversight or somnolency on the part of the Trustees. If, during the lapse of those seventy years, they obtained grants of public money which amounted, in the aggregate, to but £151,762—little more, on an average, than two thousand pounds a year—they made not a few applications to which the Treasury, or the House of Commons, refused to respond. Meanwhile, the gifts of Benefactors probably much more than trebled the public grants.
At the outset, the Museum was divided into three ‘Departments’ only: (1) Manuscripts; (2) Printed Books; (3) Natural History.