Fitzwilliam Museum, The

Please note that this collection is currently under negotiation. 

Images supplied cover a wide range of pictorial content drawn from the rich, diverse and internationally significant collections of The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, including major artists such as Canaletto, J.M.W. Turner, George Stubbs and John Constable. Every image is tagged by geographical location and a date or period.

Many of the images are linked to contemporary social and political events. For example, George Stubbs’ painting of the horse Gimcrack with John Pratt up on Newmarket Heath of c.1765 marks an important period in the history of horse-racing in Britain, when the coloured silks of patrons had been introduced and the sport had begun to attract a wide public. Other images depict engineering structures or science and technology subjects: a number of ceramics, for example, have images of industrial buildings and events, such as the Great Exhibition of 1851 or the Dublin Industrial Exhibition of 1853. A painting such as Ford Madox Brown’s The Last of England, depicting 19th-century emigrants leaving the UK with the cliffs of Dover in the background, offers comparative material on the theme of emigration within a social, political and cultural context.

Example items:

An avenue of trees in Gunton Park (John Middleton)

(graphite and watercolour on thick paper, height: 331mm; width: 472mm) This is a good example of Middleton’s clear, precise watercolour style.

"An avenue of trees in Gunton Park (John Middleton)"

Oliver Cromwell. Lord Protector.

(gold, 49.14 grams, diameter: 4.0cm) This is one of only two known specimens in gold of the portrait crown of Oliver Cromwell. Cromwell has been created Lord Protector in 1653, and in 1656-8 he commissioned a coinage in his own name to be made by Pierre Blondeau, an inventor of new minting machinery. The dies were made by Thomas Simon, who is justly regarded as one of the greatest English engravers of coin and medal dies. On the obverse is a superb profile portrait of the Lord Protector, wearing a laurel wreath in the manner of a Roman emperor; on the reverse is the crowned arms of the Protectorate. The inscription PAX QVAERITVR BELLO (‘Peace is sought by war’) refers to Cromwell’s belief that it was necessary to fight the Civil Wars against the Charles I to secure a just peace.

"Oliver Cromwell. Lord Protector."

Siegfried Sassoon (Glyn Warren Philpot)

(oil on canvas, height: 61cm; width: 50.8cm) Sassoon had been introduced to Philpot, himself invalided out of active service, by the art critic Robert Ross shortly after his return from duty in the First World War; this portrait was painted within weeks of their first meeting.

"Siegfried Sassoon (Glyn Warren Philpot)"