As would be expected in an exhibition of (mostly) British art from 1846 to c.1915, subjects are drawn from antiquity, history, and the Bible, and include landscapes, portraits, and genre subjects. Not being limited to Britain, there are a few Continental works, striking examples being Ary Scheffer’s Dante and Virgil encountering the shades of Francesca da Rimini and Paolo in the underworld. Sculpture also features, mostly from the New Sculpture movement, and includes two versions, one in marble and the other in bronze, of Frederick Leighton’s sexy and virile Athlete struggling with a python. A visit to the exhibition, with its richly coloured paintings punctuated with figurative bronze and marble sculpture, gave a glimpse of what drives Schaeffer and his collection passion.

To contextualise a private art collection in a publication is no mean feat, and Richard Beresford has achieved this eloquently, presenting interesting and detailed entries in an engaging manner, all supplemented with an extensive apparatus of provenance, exhibition histories, and literature.