An often overlooked aspect of the first Duke of Wellington’s private life is getting a new look at his London home — and it’s something not many people know much about.
His art collection.
It may seem odd to suggest that a man who lived in a grand house packed with some of the best art available to galleries at the time could have his interest in art overlooked, but it’s down to how the art was acquired.
Most of what people see in Apsley House is from the Spanish Gift — paintings that had been looted by Napoleon Bonaparte’s older brother and later rescued from the battlefield at Vitoria, Spain, in June 1813. Wellington repeatedly offered to return the collection to Spain, and on the third attempt, the Spanish King Ferdinand VII offered them to Wellington as a gift.
So, Apsley House has a grand collection of works by artists as grand as Velázquez, Titian, Rubens and Brueghel.
What few realise is that the Duke was also a keen art collector himself, but most of the art he bought with his own money doesn’t really fit in with the grand collection, so it’s been somewhat overlooked.
Until now.
Unlike the grand portaits and landscapes he was gifted, the Duke’s taste leaned towards paintings of ordinary folk in ordinary (if generally imagined by the artist) scenes of normal life. In fact, this isn’t hugely surprising, as the Duke, for all his success and wealth, was noted for being rather disinterested in the pomp and circumstance that his public role required.
Most of the Dutch paintings he bought for himself were acquired in Paris sales, maybe taking advantage of the downfall of a number of rich people who were selling off their possessions after being dispossessed of power following Napolean’s downfall.
Unusually, none of the paintings were sold by the subsequent Dukes, so apart from loans to other galleries, the collection is still intact. Originally, the collection was usually displayed in Aspley House’s Piccadilly Drawing Room, at the top of the stairs, but were later distributed elsewhere.
Now, the current Duke and Dr Olivia Fryman, keeper of the Wellington Collection, have brought the paintings back together again into the Drawing Room where they originally hung.
Bringing the collection back together also provided an opportunity for some conservation work. A collection of paintings in a house next to a very busy roundabout suffers from its location, and they had to do a lot of cleaning to reveal long-hidden details in the paintings.
In the end eighteen of the original twenty-one paintings bought by the 1st Duke have been included in the display.
These are simpler paintings, more bawdy than boring, telling a story rather than trying to project an official image of political and military power. They’re the people that history so often overlooks.
It can be said that the room is now a lighter aperitif for the main collection in the Waterloo Gallery and State Dining Rooms — and they’re a bit of a relief from all the grand paintings in grand rooms being terrifically grand.
The redisplayed collection will be on show in Apsley House until Christmas 2025 and is included in the entry price (free for English Heritage members).
