“Paintings From the Reign of Victoria: The Royal Holloway Collection, London” will be on view May 7 to July 26 at the Yale Center for British Art.
In the final years of his life, entrepreneur and philanthropist Thomas Holloway (1880‱883) purchased a group of “modern” paintings that became the crowning gift of his endowment of a college for women, Royal Holloway College, opened by Queen Victoria in 1886.
Holloway acquired the art collection with the students in mind as an educational tool of unsurpassed richness. “The Royal Holloway Collection” showcases 60 paintings by some of the leading artists of the Victorian period. It is the first time that selected works from this collection are touring the United States.
The Holloway collection not only demonstrates the astute taste of a late Victorian collector, but highlights some of the greatest achievements in the figurative and landscape art of the Nineteenth Century, encompassing scenes of contemporary life, historical events, landscapes and animal studies.
Among the most notable works in the exhibition are William Powell Frith’s Dickensian social panorama “The Railway Station,” 1862; Edwin Longsden Long’s “Babylonian Marriage Market,” 1875; and Sir John Everrett Millais’s iconic history lesson, “The Princes in the Tower,” 1878.
The painting “Man Proposes, God Disposes,” 1864, by Sir Edwin Landseer will open the exhibition. The works depicts polar bears devouring the remains of Sir John Franklin’s doomed expedition, begun in 1845, to discover the Northwest Passage. Even today, it inspires superstition among Royal Holloway’s students, and as a result the painting is concealed during college examinations.
The Yale Center for British Art is at 1080 Chapel Street. For information, 203-432-2800 or www.yale.edu/ycba .
