Chapter 4

.]

_COLLECTIONS OF PICTURES BELONGING TO THE TRUSTEES OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM, BUT DEPOSITED IN THE NATIONAL GALLERY._

(XXXIV)

=1823.= The BEAUMONT GALLERY.

_Collected_ by =Sir George Howland Beaumont= (Died 7 February, 1827); _Given_ by the Collector in 1823 to the British Museum, on condition of its usufructuary retention, during his lifetime. Deposited in the National Gallery, under terms of arrangement, after the Collector’s death.

(XXXV)

=1830.= The HOLWELL-CARR GALLERY.

_Collected_ by the Reverend =William Holwell Carr= (Died 24 December, 1830), and by the Collector _bequeathed_ to the British Museum. _Deposited_ under arrangements similar to those adopted for the Beaumont Pictures in the National Gallery.

These are the primary Accession-Collections that came to the British Museum, during the first seventy years which elapsed after its public opening (January, 1759). They form a noble monument alike of the liberality and public spirit of individual Englishmen, and of the fidelity of the Trustees to the charge committed to them as a body. And the reader will hardly have failed to notice how remarkable a proportion of the most munificent of the Benefactors of the institution were, previously to their gifts, numbered amongst its Trustees.

If the liberality of Parliament failed to be elicited in due correspondency—in respect either to the amount or the frequency of its grants—to that of individuals, the failure is rarely, if ever, ascribable to oversight or somnolency on the part of the Trustees. If, during the lapse of those seventy years, they obtained grants of public money which amounted, in the aggregate, to but £151,762—little more, on an average, than two thousand pounds a year—they made not a few applications to which the Treasury, or the House of Commons, refused to respond. Meanwhile, the gifts of Benefactors probably much more than trebled the public grants.

At the outset, the Museum was divided into three ‘Departments’ only: (1) _Manuscripts_; (2) _Printed Books_; (3) _Natural History_.

The acquisition, in 1801, of the Alexandrian monuments, was the first accession which gave prominence to the ‘Antiquities’—theretofore regarded as little more than a curious appendage to the Natural History Collections. Four years later came the Townley Marbles. It was then obvious that a new Department ought to be made. This change was effected in 1807. The Marbles and minor Antiquities, together with the Prints, Drawings, Coins, and Medals (formerly appended to the Departments of Printed Books and of MSS.) were formed into a separate department. Twenty years afterwards the ‘Botanical Department’ was created, on the reception of the Banksian herbaria and their appendant Collections. The division into five departments continued down to the date of the Parliamentary inquiry of 1835–36 [Book III,