A magnificent painting collection known as the Iveagh Bequest resides at Kenwood House, a neoclassical villa in London that was remodeled by Robert Adam in the eighteenth century. Donated to the nation by Edward Cecil Guinness, 1st Earl of Iveagh (1847–1927) and heir to the world’s most successful brewery, the collection was shaped by the tastes of the Belle Epoque—Europe’s equivalent to America’s Gilded Age—when the earl shared the cultural stage and art market with other industry titans such as the Rothschilds, J. Pierpont Morgan, and Henry Clay Frick. Acquired mainly from 1887 to 1891, the earl’s purchases reveal a taste for the portraiture, landscape, and seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish works that could typically be found in English aristocratic collections. This exhibition includes approximately fifty masterworks, the majority of which are drawn from the Iveagh Bequest, with several additional works from Kenwood’s collection.

Among the works in the exhibition will be Thomas Gainsborough’s Mary, Countess Howe (ca. 1764), Frans Hals’s Pieter van den Broecke (1633), Rembrandt's sublime Portrait of the Artist (ca. 1665), Joshua Reynold’s Lady Louisa Manners (1779), and Anthony van Dyck’s Princess Henrietta of Lorraine Attended by a Page (1634). This exhibition will be the first tour of an important group of works from the Iveagh Bequest and will provide a rare opportunity to see these superb paintings outside the United Kingdom. While the exhibition is on tour, Kenwood will be undergoing a refurbishment, which is planned to be completed in late 2013.

The guest curator is Susan Jenkins, a curator at English Heritage who will be selecting the works in the exhibition in tandem with other English Heritage curators.

The AFA will produce a publication including an introductory essay and illustrated checklist of the exhibition.

Exhibition Itinerary: Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (June 3–September 3, 2012); Milwaukee Art Museum (October 4, 2012–January 6, 2013); Seattle Art Museum (February 14–May 19, 2013); Arkansas Arts Center (June 7–September 8, 2013).

For more information, contact Suzanne Ramljak, AFA Curator of Exhibitions, at 212.988.7700 x 244 or sramljak@afaweb.org.

The exhibition is organized by the American Federation of Arts and English Heritage. It is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities, with additional funding from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation. In-kind support is provided by Barbara and Richard S. Lane.