The Wallace Collection is an internationally outstanding collection which contains unsurpassed masterpieces of paintings, sculpture, furniture, arms and armour and porcelain. Built over the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by the Marquesses of Hertford and Sir Richard Wallace, it is one of the finest and most celebrated collections in the world. So that it could be kept together and enjoyed by generations of visitors, the collection was given to the British Nation in 1897. It was an astonishing bequest and one of the greatest gifts of art works ever to be transferred into public ownership. Today, our job is to maintain, research, and inspire the public to love and understand the Collection.