Qualla: Dulwich Picture Gallery

Dulwich Picture Gallery: Introduction

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Paul Sandby, Public domain. In 1790, two London art dealers received a commission from the king of Poland. Sir Francis Bourgeois, originally from Switzerland, and his French business partner Noel Desenfans had been asked by Stanislaw August Poniatowski, the last monarch of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, to assemble a national art collection for his country. The two men spent five years touring Europe, buying paintings by Rembrandt and Poussin and Murillo and Rubens. In 1795, before they could deliver, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was partitioned out of existence by Russia, Prussia, and Austria. The king was gone. The collection was orphaned. Bourgeois and Desenfans tried to sell it. Nobody bought. So they kept the paintings, and after both men died, the collection went to a charitable foundation in south London, where Sir John Soane built it a home that changed the way museums look.

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Image: Paul Sandby | Public domain

Dulwich Picture Gallery: Edward Alleyn's Bequest

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Edwardx, CC BY-SA 3.0. The foundation that received the paintings was already two centuries old. Edward Alleyn (1566 to 1626) was one of the great actors of Elizabethan theatre, the leading man of the Rose and the Fortune Theatres, the company that rivalled Shakespeare's Globe. He grew wealthy enough o...

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Image: Edwardx | CC BY-SA 3.0

Dulwich Picture Gallery: Soane's Skylights

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit William Beechey, Public domain. Bourgeois died in 1811 and left his collection to the College of God's Gift, on the advice of the actor John Philip Kemble. His will required that Sir John Soane design a gallery to house them. Soane was the Regency architect best known for the Bank of England's interior; his eye...

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Image: William Beechey | Public domain

Dulwich Picture Gallery: The World's Most-Stolen Painting

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rembrandt, Public domain. In the early hours of 31 December 1966, thieves broke into the gallery and walked out with eight paintings: three Rembrandts, three Rubens, a Gerrit Dou, and an Adam Elsheimer. They were worth at least three million pounds. The reward offered was a thousand. Detective Superintend...

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Image: Rembrandt | Public domain

Dulwich Picture Gallery: The Old Masters

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Steve Fareham, CC BY-SA 2.0. What the thieves were after, the visitors still come for. The collection runs deep in French, Italian, and Spanish Baroque, with strong British portraiture from the Tudor era forward. There are eleven Aelbert Cuyps, twelve Philip Wouwermans, ten Rubens, nineteen David Teniers the...

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Image: Steve Fareham | CC BY-SA 2.0

Dulwich Picture Gallery: A V1 and a Recovery

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ewan Munro from London, UK, CC BY-SA 2.0. On 12 July 1944, during the last desperate phase of the German V1 flying-bomb campaign on London, a buzz bomb hit the gallery and severely damaged the mausoleum and west wing. Bones from the three sarcophagi were scattered across the lawn. When Austin Vernon and Partners refurbis...

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Image: Ewan Munro from London, UK | CC BY-SA 2.0