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British art collector

Sir Richard Wallace, 1st Baronet (21 June 1818 – 20 July 1890), of Sudbourne Hall in Suffolk, Hertford House in London, of Antrim Castle, County Antrim, Northern Ireland, of 2 Rue Laffitte, Paris, and of the Château de Bagatelle in Paris, was a British art collector and Francophile. Based on the Return of Owners of Land, 1873 he was the 24th richest man in the United Kingdom and the 73rd largest landowner, holding in total 72,307 acres, with a total annual value of £86,737. In addition he had valuable property in Paris and one of the greatest private art collections in the world, part of which, now known as the Wallace Collection, was donated to the UK Government by his widow, in accordance with his wishes.

Richard is believed to have been the illegitimate son of Richard Seymour Conway, 4th Marquess of Hertford (1800–1870). He was born in London on 26 July 1818, to a certain Agnes Jackson, who according to Burns (2008) was in reality Mrs Agnes Bickley, the wife of Samuel Bickley, an insurance underwriter and member of Lloyds of London, and a daughter of Sir Thomas Dunlop Wallace, 5th Baronet (1750–1835), of Craigie Castle, Ayrshire, born "Thomas Dunlop", who had adopted the additional name and style of baronet on inheriting the Craigie estate of his grandfather Sir Thomas Wallace, 4th Baronet. It is unclear why his mother had adopted the surname Jackson, as she remained married to Samuel Bickley at the time of Richard's birth and bore Samuel legitimate children both before and after the birth. Richard's natural father, the 4th Marquess of Hertford, after whom he supposedly gained his first name, would have been 18 years old at his birth, and is supposed by Burns (2008) to have met Agnes in Brighton whilst serving in the 10th Hussars Regiment. that he was the uterine half brother of the 4th Marquess, being a son by father unknown of Maria Emilia Fagnani, Marchioness of Hertford (1771–1856) ("Mie Mie"), the estranged wife of Francis Charles Seymour Conway, 3rd Marquess of Hertford (1777–1842) and mother of the 4th Marquess. Richard lived with Mie Mie for the next 17 years until 1842 (two years after he had fathered his own son by his mistress) and the two developed a close bond. The 4th Marquess mentioned in his will the kindness that Richard had shown to his mother. He referred to her as "Aunt" and she to him as "Dear Nephew". This close relationship may have been sealed by the fact that both were illegitimate, Mie Mie being the natural daughter of the 4th Duke of Queensbury by his Italian mistress. "They both suffered the stigma of illegitimacy, at a time when bloodlines in humans were as important as in horses. They both had to endure whispered gossip the moment they turned their backs, and the trail of scandal wherever they went" (Fairweather, 2021). Long after her death Wallace erected a monument to Mie Mie in Sudbourne Church (the only one there to a Hertford in 120 years of residence) in the form of the stained glass east window depicting Mary Magdalene, the prostitute who washed Jesus’s feet with oil but was also the first person to witness the Resurrection, which Fairweather (2021) suspected to be "an intentional reference to Mie Mie’s circumstances".

Most of his youth and early manhood were spent in Paris, "where as Monsieur Richard he became a well known figure in French society and among those who devoted themselves to matters of art". In this capacity he became expert in assessing, valuing and buying works for the famous collector. Before he was forty he had made his own large collection including objets d'art, bronzes, ivories and miniatures, which collection he sold profitably in Paris in 1857,

In 1870 his father the 4th Marquess died without legitimate issue, and the titles and entailed estates, including Ragley Hall in Warwickshire and Sudbourne, passed under an entail to his second cousin, who became the 5th Marquess. However Wallace inherited his father's unentailed estates and extensive collection of European art.

His vast estate in Lisburn, Northern Ireland, extending to over 50,000 acres, produced an annual income of £50,000 (£7 million in 2022). The area was the centre of the flax and linen industry. When Wallace visited it for the first time after his inheritance, accompanied by his wife and son, he was greeted by a crowd of 20,000 people Also the Wallace Memorial in Castle Gardens, erected in 1892 by the residents of Lisburn in "grateful recognition of his generous interest in the prosperity of the town," comprises a 40 foot high stone and marble "square plan tower with a steep crocketed spire topped with a poppy head finial, the front gable bearing a date and coat of arms, niches on each façade, one bearing a bust of the subject above an inscribed tablet, and on a three stepped octagonal base". It is inscribed: It was a notable sporting estate of about 12,000 acres, and where he held lavish shooting parties, guests at which included the Prince of Wales. He employed 24 liveried gamekeepers and "a small army of domestic servants" also visible on several other houses and buildings erected by him on the estate. In 1883 he won a silver medal at the Smithfield Show as breeder of the best "Single Pig" in class LXXXVI. During 1879–82 he restored Sudbourne Church, and presented it with new furnishings. In Scott's time it is described by Vita Sackville West in Pepita (1937).

2 Rue Laffitte, Paris, formerly the hôtel d'Aubeterre or townhouse of the Aubeterre family, with a full height bowed projection at the corner, was situated on the corner of Rue Laffitte and the Boulevard des Italiens. It faced on the other side of the Rue Laffitte the famous Restaurant de la Maison d'Or. The street contained the shops of several art dealers. It was purchased by the 4th Marquess of Hertford, when his mother vacated it to live at 1 rue Taitbout, the next street 50 metres to the west. After Wallace's death it was eventually inherited by his secretary Sir John Murray Scott, during whose ownership the house and contents are described by Vita Sackville West in Pepita, her biography of her mother Lady Sackville (Scott's mistress), who ultimately inherited the contents, which she sold in 1914 to the dealer Jacques Seligmann for £270,000 (£35 million in 2022) and of which the Wallace Collection was therefore deprived:
A vast apartment on the first floor turning the corner of the Boulevard des Italiens and the Rue Laffitte with twenty windows opening on either street was in itself a treasure house which brought visitors from every part of Europe. I shall never forget the enchantment of that house. From the moment one had pulled the string and the big door had swung open admitting one to the interior courtyard where grooms in wooden clogs seemed perpetually to be washing carriages; the whole house belonged to him though he reserved only the first floor for himself the real glory of the house lay in the main apartment—room after room opened one into the other so that standing in the middle one could look down a vista of shining brown parquet floors at ivory coloured boisieries on either side. Here indeed one had the 18th century illusion at its height. All around silent and sumptuous stood the priceless furniture of the Wallace Collection.

This estate came to the Hertfords via Mie Mie, wife of the 3rd Marquess and illegitimate daughter of the 4th Duke of Queensbury. The Bury and Norwich Post reported on 3 January 1882: "It is stated that Sir Richard Wallace has decided upon laying out and cutting up his Queensberry Estate, at Newmarket, for building purposes. They include two estates, one at either end of the town, so that persons wishing to reside near the race course or near the railway can have their choice. As the town of Newmarket extends, these estates will become incorporated with it. The architect entrusted by Sir R. Wallace with the laying out of the estate is Mr. R. A. Came, of 27, Mecklenburg Square".