The House and its Owners | Family Portraits | Time Line | Family Tree | Estate History
Servants | Museum History

Temple Newsam was home to Sir Arthur Ingram and his descendants for 300 years, from 1622 when the property was purchased from the Duke of Lennox until 1922 when the property was acquired by Leeds City Council from the Hon Edward Wood (later Earl of Halifax). The family portraits housed at Temple Newsam today span this entire history and many have hung in the house ever since they were painted. This has been made possible through a variety of ways, most notably in 1948 the generous gift by Lord Halifax of family paintings including the family portraits commissioned from the fashionable French portraitist Philip Mercier in the 1740s.

Other significant acquisitions include a portrait of Lady Hertford by Sir Joshua Reynolds bought back for Temple Newsam by the National Art Collections Fund in 1952 and portraits of Sir Arthur Ingram by George Geldorp, Sir Thomas Ingram and Charles, 9th Viscount Irwin bought from Lord Halifax in 1983. The most recent acquisition is an Elizabethan portrait of Lady Bennet attributed to Hieronimos Custodis bought in 2003 with grants from the National Art Collections Fund and the Leeds Art Collections Fund.

Notifications of private ownership are acknowledged in individual portrait entries.