She made the bequest in memory of her father Lyman Allyn, a wealthy shipping merchant, to be used to create a new park and museum, a place for local citizens to learn about art and culture.

It includes the graphite Study for Madame Moitessier standing by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, as well as works by Frederic Leighton, François Boucher, Nicolas Poussin, Claude Lorrain, Charles LeBrun, and Tiepolo.

Featured artists include Rembrandt Peale, Benjamin West, Gilbert Stuart, John Trumbull, Thomas Cole, Frederick Edwin Church, and Albert Bierstadt.

[citation needed] The Lyman Allyn's collection of 19th-century American paintings ranges from the Hudson River School to the Aesthetic Movement and Impressionism.

The core of this collection consists of John Singleton Copley’s three studies for The Siege of Gibraltar (c.1785-86), two works by Benjamin West, and Winthrop Chandler’s portrait of Eunice Huntington Devotion and Her Daughter (1772).