One of Europe's great art museums. The imposing neoclassical Fitzwilliam Museum building was built in 1848 to house the art collections of Viscount Fitzwilliam, which he had bequeathed to Cambridge University.
The permanent collections at the Fitzwilliam Museum are divided into the categories of Antiquities, Applied Arts, Coins, Paintings, and Manuscripts.
Paintings:
Highlights include works by Cezanne, Rubens, Titian, Van Dyck, Hals, Canaletto, Hogarth, Gainsborough, Constable, Monet, Degas, Renoir, and Picasso. In addition there is an extensive collection of miniatures, watercolours, and prints.
Applied Arts:
European pottery, glass, furniture, clocks, fans, armour, Oriental jade and ceramics.
Antiquities:
Art from Ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome, and Cyprus.
Coins:
Ancient, medieval and modern, plus medals since the Renaissance.
Manuscripts:
Rare books, illuminated manuscripts, and music.
As well as the permanent exhibits, the Fitzwilliam hosts a regular series of temporary exhibits of international and English art.
The Fitzwilliam Museum is the art and antiquities museum of the University of Cambridge, located on Trumpington Street opposite Fitzwilliam Street in central Cambridge, England. It receives around 470,000 visitors annually (2011–12). Admission is free.
The Museum is the lead museum for the University of Cambridge Museums consortium, one of 16 Major Partner Museum services funded by Arts Council England to lead the development of the museums sector. The current Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum is Tim Knox.
Foundation & buildings
The museum was founded in 1816 with the legacy of the library and art collection of the 7th Viscount FitzWilliam. The bequest also included £100,000 "to cause to be erected a good substantial museum repository". The collection was initially placed in the old Perse School building in Free School Lane. It was moved in 1842 to the Old Schools (at that time the University Library). The "Founder's Building" itself was designed by George Basevi, completed by C. R. Cockerell and opened in 1848; the entrance hall is by Edward Middleton Barry and was completed in 1875. The first stone of the new building was laid by Gilbert Ainslie in 1837. A further large bequest was made to the University in 1912 by Charles Brinsley Marlay, including a sum of £80,000 and a collection of 84 pictures. A two-storey extension, paid for partly by the Courtauld family, was added in 1931.
Collection
The museum has five departments: Antiquities; Applied Arts; Coins and Medals; Manuscripts and Printed Books; and Paintings, Drawings and Prints. Together these cover antiquities from Ancient Egypt, Sudan, Greece and Rome, Roman and Romano-Egyptian Art, Western Asiatic displays and a new gallery of Cypriot Art; applied arts, including English and European pottery and glass, furniture, clocks, fans, armour, Chinese, Japanese and Korean art, rugs and samplers; coins and medals; illuminated, literary and music manuscripts and rare printed books; paintings, including masterpieces by Simone Martini, Domenico Veneziano, Titian, Veronese, Rubens, Van Dyck, van Goyen, Frans Hals, Canaletto, Hogarth, Gainsborough, Constable, Monet, Degas, Renoir, Cézanne and Picasso and a fine collection of 20th-century art; miniatures, drawings, watercolours and prints. Among the most notable works in the collection are the bas-reliefs from Persepolis.
Music manuscripts
There is also the largest collection of 16th-century Elizabethan virginal manuscript music written by some of the most notable composers of the time. Composers such as William Byrd, Doctor John Bull, Orlando Gibbons and Thomas Tallis.
Egyptian collection
The Egyptian Galleries at the Fitzwilliam Museum reopened in 2006 after a two-year, £1.5 million programme of refurbishment, conservation and research.
Paintings
The museum has a particularly extensive collection of Turner, which has its origins in a set of 25 watercolour drawings donated to the university by John Ruskin in 1861. Sir Sydney Cockerell, who was serving as director of the museum at the time, went on to acquire a further 8 Turner watercolours and some of his writings.
Many items in the museum are on loan from colleges of the University, for example an important group of impressionist paintings owned by King's College, which includes Cézanne's The Abduction and a study for Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by Seurat.
The Museum's collection of Pre-Raphaelite paintings includes a version of Ford Madox Brown's The Last of England, voted 8th greatest painting in Britain in 2005's Radio 4 poll, the Greatest Painting in Britain Vote.
Michelangelo bronzes
In 2015, the museum displayed two bronze statues (the Rothschild Bronzes) that it believed to be the work of Italian Renaissance artist Michaelangelo. If true, they would be the only known surviving bronze sculptures by the artist. The pair of statues depict naked, apparently drunk, men riding panthers. Art historian Paul Joannides connected the statues to a drawing in the Musée Fabre by an apprentice of Michelangelo depicting the same subject in the same pose.
Losses
On 25 January 2006, a member of the public tripped which resulted in three huge oriental porcelain vases being shattered and requiring painstaking reconstruction. At around 19:30 BST on 13 April 2012, 18 valuable and culturally significant Chinese works of art were stolen. The burglars were sentenced to a combined 18 years in jail.
The "Friends of the Fitzwilliam", founded in 1909, is a society supporting the museum, the oldest in Britain. One of the longest-serving members (1935–2003) was Denys Spittle, whose collection of manuscripts was exhibited in 2007 under the title "Private Pleasures: Illuminated manuscripts from Persia to Paris".
Erected 1837-47 to the designs of George Basevi and completed by C R Cockerell. The building is one of the finest classical structures of the date in existence and contains rich internal work. Basevi was killed in 1845 and Cockerell completed the design with a dome over the staircase hall. The staircase itself was modified by E M Barry in 1870, and the whole completed in 1875.
The north-east front has a colonnade in thirteen bays with the central bays set forward on an octastyle portico with pediment over; all Corinthian; the sculptural work being done by William Grinsell Nicholl and the tympanum being carved to the design of George Eastlake. The portico and colonnade have very elaborate plaster work; the bronze doors and their surrounds were designed by E M Barry. In the interior the galleries and library have points of interest, but the main features are in the Stairhall which was worked on by all three architects and their work is very hard to separate. The materials are marble and granite, the predominance of red being due to Barry; the arrangement of the staircase is probably to Basevi's design.
A seven-bay two-storey wing was added to the south-east elevation of the original building in 1921-2 (Marlay Galleries), and was extended with a cross-wing to the south in 1931 (Courtauld Galleries), both wings being designed by A Dunbar Smith of Smith & Brewer. The Courtauld Galleries were extended by a four-bay wing to the south-east in 1936, a block to the north-west corner in 1955, and a cube to the south-west corner in 1963-4, designed by David Roberts. The brick-faced extension to the south-east of the Courtauld Galleries was built to the designs of D Roberts & G Clarke in 1973-5, and created an internal courtyard, which was infilled by a glazed extension in 2002-4 by John Miller & Partners.