Sheepshanks Gallery at the V&A

A carte-de-visite showing a view of the Sheepshanks Gallery at the Victoria and Albert Museum in South Kensington.

The gallery was named after John Sheepshanks (1787–1863), a wealthy cloth manufacturer who, in 1857, founded the museum's paintings collection with a gift of 233 paintings and a similar number of drawings. The first of his galleries was opened in 1857 and is the earliest surviving part of the V&A. The building was extended with further top-lit galleries between 1858 and 1865.

Photographed in 1868 by James Davis Burton of London.