Delaware Art Museum to feature Paintings from the Royal Holloway Collection

Written by Luis Oneil Monday, 14 February 2011 23:11

Wilmington, DE - The Delaware Art Museum presents Paintings from the Reign of Victoria:  The Royal Holloway Collection, London, an exhibition of 60 of the most important paintings from the Victorian period, encompassing the full range of subject matter and style, on view February 1, 2009 – April 12, 2009.  The paintings were acquired by Thomas Holloway and installed in the women’s college he founded in 1879, which is still in operation today as Royal Holloway, University of London. 

The collection includes scenes of contemporary life, historical events, landscapes, animal studies, and marine subjects.  Holloway believed art could be a teaching tool, equating beauty with morality.  He bought only the best paintings, with an established provenance, paying the highest prices at auction.  Artists represented include, among others, Sir Edwin Landseer, William Powell Frith, and Pre-Raphaelite painter Sir John Everett Millais.

The Royal Holloway Collection  will complement the Delaware Art Museum’s Bancroft Collection of Pre-Raphaelite Art, which is the largest Pre-Raphaelite collection in the world outside the United Kingdom.  Samuel Bancroft, Jr. (1840-1915), a Wilmington textile mill owner, was “shocked with delight” upon viewing his first Pre-Raphaelite painting in 1880, and he began assembling his collection with the purchase of Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Water Willow  in 1890.  Bancroft’s family bequeathed his Pre-Raphaelite holdings to the Delaware Art Museum in 1935.  The Bancroft Collection is particularly strong in the late works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, which depict beautiful, seductive women, often called “stunners,” as well as works representative of the Arts & Crafts Movement.  The Royal Holloway Collection opens a window to the environment that the Pre-Raphaelites lived and worked in and allows visitors to see the Pre-Raphaelites alongside the best of their contemporaries.

Thomas Holloway (1800-1883) made his fortune in patent medicines.  After he began a public debate on “How best to spend a quarter of a million or more,” his wife Jane suggested he start a college for women.  He founded Royal Holloway College in 1879, and it was opened by Queen Victoria in 1886.  Royal Holloway and Bedford College were admitted as Schools of the University of London in 1900, and both Royal Holloway and Bedford admitted male students for the first time in 1965.  Royal Holloway, University of London continues to provide a home to the Royal Holloway Collection.

Organizer

Paintings from the Reign of Victoria:  The Royal Holloway Collection, London is organized and circulated by Art Services International, Alexandria, Virginia.

About the Museum

Founded in 1912, the Delaware Art Museum holds a world-renowned collection that focuses on American art and illustration from the 19th century to the present as well as the British Pre-Raphaelite movement.  Located at 2301 Kentmere Parkway, Wilmington, DE 19806, the Museum is open Tuesday through Saturday 10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m. and Sunday noon – 4:00 p.m.  Admission fees are charged as follows:  adults (18 – 59) $10, seniors (60+) $8, college students $5, and youth (7 – 17) $3, with children 6 and under entering for free.  Admission fees are waived every Sunday thanks to support from AstraZeneca.  For more information, call 302-571-9590 or 866-232-3714 (toll free), or visit the website at www.delart.org.