British Institution

[3] The founding "Hereditory Governors" included Sir George Beaumont, 7th Baronet and Charles Long, 1st Baron Farnborough, both of whom had employed the services of the leading dealer and picture-cleaner William Seguier, and were probably responsible for his appointment as "Superintendent".

Seguier later became Surveyor of the King's Pictures and when the National Gallery, London was founded in 1824, was appointed as the first Keeper, holding all three positions until his death in 1843, as well as continuing to run his business.

In 1833 John Constable wrote with heavy irony of having received a visit in his studio from "a much greater man than the King—the Duke of Bedford—Lord Westminster—Lord Egremont, or the President of the Royal Academy — "MR SEGUIER"."

In 1805 the initial subscribers consisted of "One duke, five marquesses, fourteen earls, two viscounts, nine lords, two bishops, four ladies, seven baronets, twenty-two members of parliament, five clergymen and above fifty private gentlemen, bankers and merchants".

The gallery had a monumental, neo-classical stone-built front, and three exhibition rooms on the first floor, with a total of more than 4,000 square feet (370 m2) of wall space for displaying pictures.

[1] Boydell ran up large debts in producing his Shakespeare engravings, and obtained an Act of Parliament in 1804 to dispose of the gallery and other property by lottery.

The main prize winner, William Tassie, a modeller and maker of replica engraved gems, then sold the gallery property and contents at auction.

[10] The Institution largely remained faithful to the hierarchy of genres and saw the encouragement of history painting as an aim, especially as opposed to portraits, traditionally the mainstay of the British market.

[11] After the first exhibition the gallery was kept open as a free school for artists, with members lending a variety of Old Masters for them to copy; at this stage the public could not see these displays.

[13] Modern works included Benjamin West's Christ Healing the Sick in the Temple, for which the very high price of 3,000 guineas was paid, though this was more than recouped by sales of an engraving commissioned by the Institution.

Robert Smirke is generally accepted as the anonymous author of a series of satirical "Catalogues Raisonnés" published in 1815–16, which savagely lampooned the Directors, the great and the good of British art patronage.

In 1830 all 91 works were by the recently dead Sir Thomas Lawrence, including all the pictures from the Waterloo Gallery at Windsor Castle; his nieces received the £3,000 of ticket sales.

[22] In 1838 the living French artist Paul Delaroche was treated as an Old Master to allow exhibition of two of his large works on British history including Charles I Insulted by Cromwell's Soldiers.

In 1848 the designation was extended in the other direction with a group of early masters including Giotto and Jan van Eyck (attributions that perhaps would not be maintained today).

Observe – Bas-relief of Shakespeare, between Poetry and Painting, on the front of the building, (cost 500 guineas), and a Mourning Achilles, in the hall of the Institution – both by Thomas Banks, R.A." from Peter Cunningham, Hand-Book of London, 1850[29] By 1850 the Queen was Patroness, and the Directors a new generation of Dukes, Marquesses and Earls, with a couple of bankers (Hope and Baring) and the ever-present Samuel Rogers.

[30] Despite the apparently flourishing state of the Institution, when the term of the 1805 lease expired in 1867 it was dissolved; according to The Art Journal the modern exhibitions had been declining in popularity, but not the Old Masters.