Henry Vaughan (art collector)

[3] In 1834 he bought a lease on a large house, number 28 Cumberland Terrace, on one of the grandest of John Nash's developments in the newly fashionable Regent's Park, which would be his home for the rest of his long life.

[1] His collecting interests were varied and eclectic; visitors to the house, which he shared with his sister Mary, would have seen rooms richly decorated with sculptures, bronzes, ivories, Spanish clocks, medieval stained glass, frames from Siena and Venice and Rembrandt etchings.

He bought drawings by Michelangelo, Raphael and Rubens, but it was eighteenth and nineteenth century British art which was his main area of interest, acquiring works by Reynolds, Gainsborough, Flaxman, Millais and Leighton, among others.

His collection included examples of almost every type of work on paper the artist produced, from early topographical drawings and atmospheric landscape watercolours, to brilliant colour studies, literary vignette illustrations and spectacular exhibition pieces.

[3] Arguably the jewel in Vaughan's collection was Constable's The Hay Wain, later to become one of the greatest and most popular British paintings,[4] which he bought in the 1860s[1] and enjoyed in his home for twenty years before presenting it to the National Gallery in 1886.

[3] He had a particularly impressive collection of Turner watercolours, many of which he kept unframed and carefully stored away from the light in strong boxes, showing an awareness of conservation which was unusual at the time, even stipulating in his bequest that they should only be shown in January.