The Wallace Collection is a museum in London occupying the grand Hertford House in Manchester Square, the former townhouse of the Marquesses of Hertford. It is named after Sir Richard Wallace, who built the extensive collection, along with the Marquesses of Hertford, in the 18th and 19th centuries. The collection features fine and decorative arts from the 15th to the 19th centuries with important holdings of French 18th-century paintings, furniture, arms and armor, porcelain and Old Master paintings arranged into 25 galleries.

It was established in 1897 from the private collection mainly created by Richard Seymour-Conway, 4th Marquess of Hertford (1800–1870), who left both it and the house to his illegitimate son Sir Richard Wallace (1818–1890), whose widow, Julie Amelie Charlotte Castelnau bequeathed the entire collection to the British nation. The collection opened to permanent public view in 1900 in Hertford House, and remains there to this day.

In our presentation we will be discussing the colorful life of the Francophile Sir Richard Wallace and focus on some of the masterpieces of painting among the vast holdings: Titian (Perseus & Andromeda, 1554-56), Rembrandt (Portrait of Titus, c. 1657), Hals, de Hooch, Velazquez, Van Dyck, Champaigne, Boucher (Madame de Pompadour, 1759), Greuze, Fragonard (The Swing, 1767) and the greatest ensemble of Watteau paintings in Britain. .