Art: Best of British at Dulwich Picture Gallery (From Your Local Guardian)

Art: Best of British at Dulwich Picture Gallery

10:20am Saturday 27th June 2009 in

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Dulwich Picture Gallery will be exhibiting the best of its British paintings this summer in a new exhibition charting the unique story of its British Collection.

To complement its new and recently published Catalogue of British Pictures, the gallery will be showing masterpieces from original bequests alongside lesser-known paintings bequeathed by collectors other than the Gallery’s founders, as well as pieces usually hidden from the public.

Following a chronological sequence the exhibition will start with a significant group of actors' portraits from the time of William Shakespeare collected by actor and theatre owner Edward Alleyn, the founder of Alleyn's College of God's Gift in Dulwich.

Also on show will be the Cartwright Bequest of 1686, the collection left by the Gallery's founders Desenfans and Bourgeois, the Linley Collection of 1835 (including Gainsborough's famous Linley Sisters), the Fairfax Murray gift of 1911 (including Hogarths, Gainsboroughs and Sir Peter Lely paintings) and a set of post-1931 acquisitions, including Queen Victoria Aged Four by the Gallery's first curator Stephen Poyntz Denning.

Director Ian Dejardin will also be holding a lecture on the exhibition on July 15.

Best of British, Dulwich Picture Gallery, Gallery Road, July 8 to September 27, £5. Call 020 8693 5254 or visit dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk.