Dulwich: the gallery-mausoleum and its Rembrandt that keeps getting stolen

A royal collection with no king

In 1790, the French art dealer Noël Desenfans and the painter Sir Francis Bourgeois were commissioned by Stanisław II Augustus Poniatowski, King of Poland, to assemble for him a collection of paintings meant "to encourage the progress of the fine arts in Poland." The two men spent several years on this task — years during which Poland was progressively dismembered by its neighbours. In 1795, following the partitions, the kingdom disappeared and the king was forced to abdicate before he could pay for or receive the works. Desenfans and Bourgeois found themselves in London with a royal collection on their hands and no recipient.

Unable to find a buyer — they approached, in vain, the Tsar of Russia and the British government — the two men kept the collection, selling some pieces, buying others. Desenfans died in 1807; Bourgeois, who survived him, then called on the architect Sir John Soane to build a mausoleum to receive his remains. It is this private collection, born of an aborted royal commission, that a few years later became the founding holdings of a public museum.

1. A building designed for daylight — and for death

On 8 January 1811, Bourgeois died from the effects of a fall from a horse: he refused to have his injured leg amputated and his condition worsened. His will left the collection to Dulwich College "for the inspection of the public," creating in effect one of the first public galleries in Britain. Soane, already engaged for Desenfans's mausoleum, designed the new building: the plans were approved in July 1811, the foundations laid on 19 October the same year, and the gallery opened to the public in 1817. Look up as you enter the exhibition rooms: there is not a single side window. Soane lights the paintings exclusively through a series of roof lanterns, which spread an even, overhead light while freeing the walls entirely for hanging — a method that has durably influenced the design of art galleries built after his.

The mausoleum itself is built into the very body of the building, at the west end of the enfilade of rooms. Its form borrows the vocabulary of the funerary monument — urns on the roofline, sculpted sarcophagi above the doors, altars at the corners — and its light, filtered through amber-tinted glass, is deliberately different from that of the neighbouring rooms: Soane spoke of a "religious light." Desenfans, Bourgeois and Margaret, Desenfans's widow, all three rest there in sealed coffins. Few museums in the world so directly combine an art collection with the tomb of its founders — do not walk through this space too quickly, it is the most singular room on the route.

2. The small portrait that keeps getting stolen

In Room 5 hangs the Portrait of Jacob de Gheyn III, painted by Rembrandt in 1632: an oil on oak panel barely 30 by 25 centimetres. It was not, originally, a stand-alone commission: Jacob de Gheyn III and his friend Maurits Huygens had each had their portrait painted by Rembrandt, on panels of identical size, under a pact — whoever died first would leave his to the survivor. De Gheyn died before Huygens; the two paintings ended up reunited. It is this small format, easy to slip under an arm, that made its criminal fortune.

The painting has been stolen from Dulwich four times: on the night of 31 December 1966 (the thieves drill a door open with a brace and bit; the work is found a few days later, abandoned in a bush); in 1973 (a man hides it under his jumper and walks out of the museum, before being caught cycling away with the painting in the bicycle basket); on 14 August 1981 (it is recovered on 3 September when four men are arrested in a taxi, following a police stakeout); and in May 1983 (burglars smash a roof skylight and prise the painting off the wall with a crowbar; it does not resurface until October 1986, in an anonymous parcel left at the left-luggage office of a British garrison station in Münster, Germany). These four thefts have earned the painting an entry in the Guinness World Records as the most stolen work of art, and the nickname "the takeaway Rembrandt" on this side of the Channel. Looking at this modest format, it is hard at first glance to see why it attracted thieves so persistently — that is exactly the question worth asking in Room 5.

3. The Dutch Golden Age around the portrait

The same room brings together several seventeenth-century Dutch landscape painters, including Jan Wijnants, who joined the collection notably via the Bourgeois bequest of 1811. Wijnants painted landscapes of dunes and sunken lanes, often with no figures: he would then hand over the addition of figures and animals to specialists in that genre, a collaborative practice common in Dutch workshops of the period. Look, in his canvases, for the raking light on sand and dead trees that recurs like a signature.

Willem van de Velde the Younger, also present in the room, was the most celebrated marine painter of his day: his sea scenes, ranging from dead calm to storm, left a lasting mark on English marine painting of the eighteenth century, where he settled from 1672 onward. Alongside these landscapes and seascapes, Jan van Kessel and Nicolaes Berchem round out the picture of a Dutch Golden Age shown here in its diversity of genres — landscape, marine, pastoral scene — rather than as a mere foil to the neighbouring Rembrandt.

How much time

The Dulwich route lends itself to a short, dense visit: Soane's building, the mausoleum and Room 5 concentrate most of what makes the place unique, without needing to cover the full 600 paintings on display.

Soane's façade and roof lanterns — 5 minutes.
The mausoleum — 5 minutes.
The most stolen Rembrandt in the world (Room 5) — 10 minutes.
The Dutch landscapes in Room 5 (Wijnants, Van de Velde) — 10 minutes.
The rest of the collection — 20 minutes.

Sources and verification

The facts, dates and figures below have been checked against the official Dulwich Picture Gallery website, Wikipedia (English and French) and specialist sources on art history and art theft.

Displays and room openings can change. Check the Dulwich Picture Gallery website on the day of your visit before following a route.

Listen to the commentary in the gallery

This route gives you a thread to follow. In front of an artwork, CulturAll adds the audio commentary: photograph the work or its label, listen, then ask your questions.