page_title: Orleans Collection
section_title: Bridgewater collection
hierarchical_section_title: Orleans Collection / Bridgewater collection
context_page_description: The Orleans Collection was a very important collection of over 500 paintings formed by Philippe d'Orléans, Duke of Orléans, mostly acquired between about 1700 and his death in 1723. Apart from the great royal-become-national collections of Europe it is arguably the greatest private collection of Western art, especially Italian, ever assembled, and probably the most famous, helped by the fact that most of the collection has been accessible to the public since it was formed, whether in Paris, or subsequently in London, Edinburgh and elsewhere.
  The core of the collection was formed by 123 paintings from the collection of Queen Christina of Sweden, which itself had a core assembled from the war booty of the sacks by Swedish troops of Munich in 1632 and Prague in 1648 during the Thirty Years War. After the French Revolution the collection was sold by Louis Philippe d'Orléans, Philippe Égalité, and most of it acquired by an aristocratic English consortium led by Francis Egerton, 3rd Duke of Bridgewater. Much of the collection has been dispersed, but significant groups remain intact, having passed by inheritance.
context_section_description: On Bridgewater's death five years after the purchase, he bequeathed his collection to Gower, who put it and his own paintings on at least semi-public display in Bridgewater House, Westminster; it has been on public display ever since.  The collection contained over 300 paintings, including about 50 Orleans paintings, and was known as the "Stafford Galley" in Cleveland House until the house was rebuilt and renamed as Bridgewater House in 1854, and then as the "Bridgewater Gallery".  It was opened in 1803, and could be visited on Wednesday afternoons over four, later three, months in the summer by "acquaintances" of a member of the family (in practice tickets could mostly be obtained by writing and asking for them), or artists recommended by a member of the Royal Academy.  Angerstein's paintings were on display on similar terms in his house in Pall Mall, which from 1824 became the first home of the National Gallery.
  On the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939, the collection was moved from London to Scotland. Since 1946 26 paintings, sixteen from the Orleans Collection, known collectively as "the Bridgewater loan" or "the Sutherland Loan" have been on loan to the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh, though up to 2008 five from this group had been bought by the Gallery.
  The collection has passed by descent to the 7th Duke of Sutherland, (most of whose wealth is contained in the paintings collection), but in late August 2008 the 7th Duke announced that he wished to sell some of the collection in order to diversify his assets. He at first offered Diana and Callisto and Diana and Acteon, two works by Titian as a pair to the British national galleries at £100 m (a third of their overall estimated market price) over a period.  The National Gallery of Scotland and the National Gallery in London announced they would combine forces to raise the sum, initially in the form of £50 m to purchase Diana and Actaeon paid over three years in instalments and then £50 m for Diana and Callisto paid for similarly from 2013. The campaign gained press support, though it received some criticism for the Duke's motives or (from John Tusa and Nigel Carrington of the University of the Arts) for distracting from funding art students  In 2009 it was announced that the first £50M for Diana and Actaeon had been raised - the painting will rotate every five years between Edinburgh (first) and London.  The sale of Diana and Callisto for £45M was announced in 2012.
caption: Titian's Diana and Callisto, long part of the Sutherland Loan to the National Gallery of Scotland, now sold and shared by them with the National Gallery.
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