Sir David Murray, R.A., H.R.S.A., R.S.W. (1849-1933)

This magisterial evocation of the New Forest, looking across the Solent to the Isle of Wight, owes a debt to Turner, and thence to Claude. Murray was keenly aware of the great tradition of landscape painting in British Art, and left a bequest to the RA to encourage young artists to further that pursuit. In the Country of Constable, his RA exhibit of 1903, a homage to Turner's contemporary, was bought by the Chantrey Bequest.

Hampshire was bought by George McCulloch, a Scottish mine owner, who had made his fortune in Australia. In 1891 he returned to London, and between 1893 and his death in 1907 he established an art collection of international renown. The parameters of the collection were that each work had to havebeen painted within his own lifetime. Amongst the three hundred works hung at 184 Queen's Gate, Kensington, were Millais's Sir Isumbras, and two great Leightons, The Daphnephoria, and The Garden of the Hesperides. Amongst his three late Burne-Jones's was the oil version of Love Among the Ruins.

McCulloch and Murray were exact contemporaries, having been born in Glasgow in 1848 and 1849 respectively. McCulloch's collection, the greatest at that date, was sold posthumously at Christie's in 1913 and was subsequently widely dispersed.