Compton Verney

• Guide to the collections of an award-winning British art gallery
• Compton Verney’s collections focus on areas currently under-represented by British museums and galleries
• Features the largest selection of British Folk Art in the UK

Compton Verney, a Grade-I listed mansion house in Warwickshire, England, was redesigned by Robert Adam in the 1760s and is set in parkland landscaped by Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown. Compton Verney was bought by Compton Verney House Trust with financial support from the Peter Moores Foundation in 1993, when it was decided that the mansion would be transformed into an art gallery. Compton Verney opened to the public in 2004 and houses six permanent collections, highlighting areas that are under-represented in the UK. The collection of paintings from Naples represents a cross-section of masterpieces from 1600 to 1800; the ‘Golden Age’ of Neapolitan art. German medieval art from 1450 to 1650 includes work by Cranach, Riemenschneider and Schongauer. The display of Chinese bronzes is the largest collection outside London. Compton Verney also holds the largest collection of British Folk Art in the UK, as well as a selection of British portraits and the work of 20th-century textile designer Enid Marx, with objects she collected with the historian Margaret Lambert.

Kathleen Soriano is the Director of Compton Verney. Emmanuel Cooper is the author of many books on ceramics, including a biography of Bernard Leach. Since 1999 he has been Visiting Professor of Ceramics at the Royal College of Art. Xavier Salomon is Curator at Dulwich Picture Gallery. Dr Wang Tao is Senior Lecturer in Chinese Archaelogy at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Jeremy Warren is Assistant Director and Head of Collections, The Wallace Collection. Karen Hearn is Curator, Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century British Art, Tate Britain.