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The special strengths of the National Trust’s picture collections must lie in portraiture, some four-fifths of the pictures in National Trust houses being family portraits.
But it is worth remembering that the first collections of paintings to be given to the Trust were Old Master collections made or completed in the 20th century.
Polesden Lacey in Surrey, with its collection of early Italian and Flemish pictures, Dutch 17th-century paintings and classic British portraits, was left to the Trust in 1942 by Dame Margaret Greville.
This bequest was followed by the comparable gifts by the 2nd Viscount Bearsted of the collections at Upton House in Warwickshire in 1948 and Anthony de Rothschild’s of the collections at Ascott, Buckinghamshire in 1949.
The peak was reached with James de Rothschild’s bequest of Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire and its collections in 1957, subsequently complemented by part of his share of the paintings and the 18th-century decorative drawings collected by his father Baron Edmond de Rothschild.
Other 20th-century collections include the Faringdon Trust collection at Buscot Park in Oxfordshire, the house given to the Trust in 1949 by Ernest Cook, and those formed by the 1st Lord Fairhaven at Anglesey Abbey in Cambridgeshire and by Captain and Mrs Bambridge at Wimpole Hall in Cambridgeshire.
Collections based on Grand Tour purchases and those of an even earlier date, came to the National Trust with Stourhead in Wiltshire, Petworth House in West Sussex, Attingham Park in Shropshire, Tatton Park in Cheshire, Ickworth House in Suffolk, Felbrigg Hall in Norfolk, Dunham Massey in Cheshire, Kingston Lacy in Dorset, Belton House in Lincolnshire and Kedleston Hall in Derbyshire.
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Some 11,500 oil paintings are included on the inventories, and the richness and diversity of these was demonstrated at the National Trust’s Centenary Exhibition at the National Gallery in 1995 In Trust for the Nation.
Important collections of architectural drawings are held at Nostell Priory in West Yorkshire, Kedleston Hall, Tatton Park, Snowshill Manor in Gloucestershire and Kingston Lacy.
Many other houses have collections of topographical and amateur drawings, and prints of varying quality are ubiquitous.
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