Educated at Eton and the University of Sydney, Salting inherited a sizeable fortune on the death of his father and settled in London.
In addition to three works given during his lifetime, Salting bequeathed 192 paintings to the National Gallery (31 of which have since been transferred to the Tate in its role as the national collection of British art). There were also major bequests to the British Museum and the Victoria & Albert Museum.
George Salting
George Salting was born in Australia on 15 August 1835. He was an avid collector of the fine and decorative arts and continued collecting right up until his death in 1909.
Selected works from the Salting Bequest
The Virgin and Christ Child are seen as if at an open window, with the infant perched on the sill. Mary gazes lovingly at her son and offers him her breast; images of the Virgin breastfeeding emphasised Christ’s humanity and vulnerability.Small religious panels like this were used as an aid to pr...
It appears to be dark outside this elegant room: a blue curtain covers the top part of the window, but the glass below it is black. The light which glints in the heavily dilated pupils of the woman seated at the keyboard comes from in front of the painting, an unusual effect for Vermeer.Significa...
Under a stormy sunset sky a distant range of mountains is strung out along the horizon. In the foreground a figure stands at the edge of what is possibly an expanse of water. This view was probably painted in 1844, when Rousseau travelled with Jules-Louis Dupré to the Landes, a region south of Bo...
On display elsewhere
Bartolomeo Bianchini was a nobleman and humanist scholar from Bologna – his name is written on the letter he holds. This is the earliest known use of a letter as a means of naming the sitter in an Italian portrait.The painted ledge makes it appear that we are looking through a window. Bianchini’s...
Not on display
A young woman is moving towards an open window or door through which a hilly landscape can be seen. She turns to look back at us over her shoulder, her arm parallel with a stone parapet on which the date 1510 is written. On a metal salver she carries the greyish-green severed head of a man. The w...
This painting demonstrates Frans Hals’s gift for creating lively and animated portraits that suggest distinctive personalities. We don't know who the woman in this compelling work is, but her elegant dress and jewellery indicate that, like many of Hals’s patrons, she may have been the wife of a w...
Follower of Robert Campin
This puzzling picture of the Virgin and Child is often called the ‘Firescreen Madonna’, after the large wicker firescreen behind the Virgin’s head. We do not know who it was made for, or where or how it was used. We are not even sure how it originally looked: it was extensively restored in the ni...
The focus of this picture is the loving gaze which passes between the Christ Child and his mother, the Virgin Mary. The infant is carried to her by two angels; he reaches urgently towards her as she holds out her breast for him, tenderly grabbing her little finger between his.The trim of the Virg...
Not on display