British and Irish Paintings in Public Collections An Index of British and Irish Oil Paintings by Artists Born Before 1870 in Public and Institutional Collections in the United Kingdom and Ireland Christopher Wright, Catherine Gordon, Mary Peskett Smith

This book, the first of its kind, sets a new standard as a work of reference covering British and Irish art in public collections from the beginning of the sixteenth century to the end of the nineteenth. The remit has been as broad as possible. Apart from the vast holdings in large and small museums and galleries throughout the country, works in the care of the National Trust and the National Trust for Scotland, in town halls, hospitals and parish churches have also been covered, and clubs, learned societies and trustee collections have also been included where possible. Not included are works in private hands, with the exception of those pictures on the Inland Revenue list of tax exempt works of art. Nearly 9,000 painters are listed, with almost 90,000 paintings, in more than 1,700 separate collections. Within this vast coverage is another important category - those pictures that are now lost, mostly as a consequence of the Second World War, or have been de-accessioned, mostly in the period from about 1950 to about 1975 when Victorian art was out of fashion. Substantial numbers of pictures were sold off at that time, from both major and minor public collections. The listing of these pictures is an essential tool for researchers. The listing of many tens of thousands of previously unpublished works, including around 13,000 which do not yet have any form of attribution, makes this book a unique and indispensable work of reference, and one that will transform the study of British and Irish painting.

Christopher Wright is a free-lance art-historian. His books include Georges de la Tour, with Benedict Nicolson (1974), Poussin (1985), Rembrandt (2000), and similar works of reference such as Old Master Paintings in Britain (1976) and his Index of Paintings in British Museums (1980).