Jersey Heritage

For a small island measuring approximately 46 square miles (120 km2) Jersey has a remarkable fine art collection comprising in excess of 10,000 paintings, sculpture and photographs of which over 600 alone are oil paintings. Jersey has a surprisingly rich art history and Jersey Heritage is the body charged by the Island’s governing body with the care of the Island’s heritage. The collection is obviously heavily biased towards Jersey artists and or images and the largest collection the 'Société Jersiaise' was begun in 1873.

Historically, the island has been visited by artists of the highest calibre such as Dominic Serres (1722-1793) and Sir Edward Poynter and Sir John Everett Millais (1829-1896), both of whom painted island-born beauty Lillie Langtry. It is also the birthplace of marine painter Philip John Ouless (1817-1885), watercolourist Jean Le Capelain (1812-1848) and more recently artist Edmund Blampied. The contemporaneous parts of the collection includes works by Richard Allen, Malcolm Arbuthot, Derek Crow, Frank Faed, Peter Oliver, Robert Tilling, Tom Wood and sculpture by Ian Rank-Broadley. The locations on the island where the majority of the art works are housed include Elizabeth Castle, Jersey Museum and Art Gallery, Mont Orgueil Castle, the Royal Court House and the Government House.