Art & Collections

Harewood House is home to an astounding collection of paintings, furniture and ceramics. Harewood has enjoyed a very special relationship with contemporary artists and craftspeople throughout its history.

Today Harewood is home to an astounding collection of paintings by masters of the Italian Renaissance, family portraits by Reynolds, Hoppner and Lawrence, and modern art collected by the current Earl and Countess. Edward ‘Beau’ Lascelles was a patron of JMW Turner, who came here as a young artist aged just 22 to paint the new house and its landscape. The family portraits were painted by the fashionable artists of the day and in the early 20^th century the 6^th Earl collected a number of Renaissance paintings.

In 1767, Thomas Chippendale, who would become the greatest and most famous English furniture maker, received the largest and most lucrative commission of his career, worth more than £10,000, to furnish the newly built Harewood House. Chippendale and his son not only provided sumptuous highly crafted pieces of furniture for the grandest rooms of the House but also simple, functional items such as garden benches in a project that spanned 30 years. Today, Harewood House is home to some of the most outstanding pieces of Chippendale furniture ever produced.

Edward ‘Beau’ Lascelles also amassed a collection of French and Oriental porcelain to rival that of his contemporary, the future George IV.

Explore the collections here: Harewood Collections Online

Donation of Objects to Harewood House Trust

We are grateful to everyone who considers gifting an object to Harewood. We welcome gifts in good condition with known provenance, that strengthen our collection through a variety of ways:

• historical significance to Harewood or a Lascelles family provenance
• direct relevance to the collection
• contemporary responses to the collection, architecture of Harewood or the surrounding landscape.

How to donate objects:
Please read our current collecting policy, particularly Themes and Priorities for Future Collecting on page 5, to see if your intended gift fits our collecting criteria. You can read about this here:

HHT_CollectionsDevelopment_Policy

If your gift fits current criteria, please click on the link below to see what to do next:

HHT-Gift Acceptance Procedure_

Please note that any donations to Harewood House Trust require a transfer of ownership from you to the Trust. Unfortunately, we are not able to ensure that your donation will go on display or accept all donations.

Thank you for considering a gift to Harewood.