The Founders of the Wallace Collection - Softcover

The newly updated fifth edition, published for an exhibition at Wallace Collection in fall 2014, The Founders of the Wallace Collection details the fascinating history of the Hertford family. This latest edition includes improved design and updated information from the previous editions with new images from the Hertford House Historic Collection and other sources. The Founders is a gripping historical account that provides memories of five generations of The Wallace Collection, offering an important resource for those interested in the formation of one of the world's greatest art collections. Detailing the rich, and at times sordid, history of the Hertford family, the book unveils how the Collection was principally formed by one of the great nineteenth-century collectors, the 4th Marquess of Hertford. It also discusses how other items central to the Collection were provided by his forebears, the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Marquesses, and by his illegitimate son who gave the Collection its name, Sir Richard Wallace.

Peter Hughes is an acclaimed art historian and former head curator of the Wallace Collection. He is the author of the three-volume Wallace Collection Catalogue of Furniture and the monograph French Eighteenth-Century Clocks and Barometers in the Wallace Collection.