The origins of the collection of art housed in the Dulwich Picture Gallery originated in the early 17th century when Edward Alleyn, founder of the College of God’s Gift bequeathed his collection of paintings to the College upon his death.  The collection included a series of portraits of the kings of England and portraits of Edward Alleyn himself and his wife Joan.  Alleyn’s collection was added to at the end of the century with a further 239 pictures bequeathed to the College by actor William Cartwright.  The collection was displayed on the first floor of the Old College and was said to contain “some scarce and valuable paintings.”

 

Moving forward to the end of the 18th century, Noel Joseph Desenfans, a French art dealer living in London, was commissioned  in 1790 by King Stanislaus of Poland to find and purchase pictures to create a National Gallery of Poland.  Stanislaus had been put on the Polish throne by his former lover Catherine the Great but, showing no sentiment toward her former lover, she led the Partition of Poland with Prussia and Austria.  Desenfans, and his friend Sir Peter Bourgeois, had travelled throughout Europe and acquired a large collection of paintings intended for Stanislaus but in 1795 Stanislaus lost his throne and became a semi-prisoner in St Petersburg.  The deal was not completed and Desenfans was left with a large number of paintings on his hands.  He sold many of them and replaced them with pictures of higher quality.  He tried to interest the authorities in creating a public national gallery and submitted plans unsuccessfully to the British Museum and the Royal Academy.  

 

Desenfans died in 1807 and Bourgeois acquired the art collection in its entirety.  Some sources suggest that Desenfans and his wife Margaret lived in an unconventional ménage a trois at Desenfans’ house in Charlotte Street (now Hallam Street) whereas the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography states that Noel and Margaret Desenfans informally ‘adopted’ Bourgeois when his mother died and his father, a Swiss watchmaker, abandoned him.  Bourgeois continued Desenfans' efforts in establishing a national gallery for the public and re-established contact with the British Musem but found them off-putting.  By the terms of his will he bequeathed the collection to Margaret Desenfans for her lifetime and then it was to pass “to the master, wardens, and fellows of Dulwich College in trust for the public use” and that they should be available for inspection by the public. He left an endowment of £10,000 and £2,000 to his friend Sir John Soane to build a gallery to house the collection and a sum to build a mausoleum close by which would house the remains of M and Mme Desenfans and Bourgeois himself.