The Wallace Collection’s current exhibition of art assembled by its namesake, Richard Wallace (1818–90), is both celebration and revelation.1 It’s Wallace’s two-hundredth birthday, a worthy milestone for the museum that holds the single most valuable gift of art the British nation has ever received. This magnitude of philanthropy is itself a shock. The collection of works by Canaletto, Hals, Rembrandt, Poussin, Fragonard, the best British portraitists, and so many others is not entirely a secret pleasure. Though its Manchester Square location in London is not the most conspicuous, connoisseurs of all stripes know the museum well and love it.

Much of the collection was built by four well-known Marquesses of Hertford, yet the titular Wallace is for many a mystery. Likely the illegitimate son of the Fourth Marquess of Hertford, Wallace collected with the passion, limitless budget, and eye for quality of his purported ancestors. His taste, though, was different. He had a most elegant, refined taste for the small and precious, for ornamented Chinese cups, jeweled daggers, and medieval carved ivory. The show celebrates miniaturist sparkle, intricacy, and the joy of close looking.

But who was Richard Wallace? His story is riveting, sad, astonishing, and as rich in pathos as one any Victorian storyteller could have spun.

The First Marquess was an ambassador to France and Viceroy of Ireland. The Second, a longtime MP and official in George III’s court, bought with a