Sir Richard Wallace, 1st Baronet (21 June 1818 – 20 July 1890) was a British aristocrat, art collector and Francophile. Based on the Return of Owners of Land 1873, he was the 24th richest man in the United Kingdom and the 73rd largest landowner, holding in total in England and Ireland, with a total annual value of £86,737.Bateman, Great Landowners of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, 1876: 58,365 acres in County Antrim, with a valuation of £67,954, 11,224 acres in Suffolk, 25 acres in Cambridgeshire (Newmarket), 2,693 County Down In addition he had valuable property in Paris and one of the greatest private art collections in the world, part of which, now known as the Wallace Collection, was donated to the UK Government by his widow, in accordance with his wishes.

Origins and youth Richard is believed to have been the illegitimate son of Richard Seymour-Conway, 4th Marquess of Hertford (1800–1870). He was born in London on 26 July 1818, to a certain Agnes Jackson,Higgott who according to Burns (2008) was in reality Mrs Agnes Bickley, the wife of Samuel Bickley, an insurance underwriter and member of Lloyd's of London, and a daughter of Sir Thomas Dunlop Wallace, 5th Baronet (1750–1835), of Craigie Castle, Ayrshire,Burns, 2008 born "Thomas Dunlop", who had adopted the additional name and style of baronet on inheriting the Craigie estate of his grandfather Sir Thomas Wallace, 4th Baronet. It is unclear why his mother had adopted the surname Jackson, as she remained married to Samuel Bickley at the time of Richard's birth and bore Samuel legitimate children both before and after the birth.

Richard's natural father, the 4th Marquess of Hertford, after whom he supposedly gained his first name, would have been 18 years old at his birth, and is supposed by Burns (2008) to have met Agnes in Brighton whilst serving in the 10th Hussars Regiment. He never married and Richard was his only offspring.

However, it was previously thought possible that he was the uterine half-brother of the 4th Marquess, being a son by father unknown of Maria Emilia Fagnani, Marchioness of Hertford (1771–1856) ("Mie-Mie"), the estranged wife of Francis Charles Seymour-Conway, 3rd Marquess of Hertford (1777–1842) and mother of the 4th Marquess. Later in life, after 1870 during his court case concerning his contested inheritance from the 4th Marquess, Richard declined the opportunity to put his origins on public record, stating merely that "he had been brought from London to Paris in 1825 aged 7 with his nurse". It is however recorded in surviving correspondence that the 4th Marquess had given his second cousin Francis Seymour, 5th Marquess of Hertford "the most solemn assurance that he was not Mr. Wallace's father." It is possible that Wallace himself did not know the truth of the matter. However, he did at some point discover that his mother's maiden name was Wallace, and on 21 April 1842, aged 24, he was baptised in the Anglican Church in the Rue d'Aguesseau in Paris under the surname Wallace, with the certificate of baptism recording simply that the name of his parents was Wallace. Thenceforth he was known as Richard Wallace.

Move to France In 1825, aged seven and known as "Richard Jackson", his mother Agnes Jackson left him in Paris under the care and education of "Mie-Mie", the mother of the 4th Marquess, who lived at 1 Rue Taitbout, 50 metres from the house of her son at 2 Rue Laffitte.Both residences are on corners of the Boulevard des Italiens, at the tops of their adjacent streets Richard lived with Mie-Mie for the next 17 years until 1842Will of 4th Marquess of Hertford dated 1850: "I hereby revoke the bequest contained in the will of 1838 of the residue of all my real and personal estate to my brother, Lord Henry Seymour, and to reward as much as I can Richard Wallace for all his care and attention to my dear mother, and likewise for his devotedness to me during a long and painful illness I had in Paris in 1840, and on all other occasions. I give such residue to the said Richard Wallace, now living at the Hotel des Bains, Boulogne-sur-Mere, and whose domicle previous to the revolution of February, 1842, was in my mother's house, Rue Taitbout, Paris, absolutely." (Quoted by Burns) (two years after he had fathered his own son by his mistress) and the two developed a close bond. The 4th Marquess mentioned in his will the kindness that Richard had shown to his mother. He referred to her as "Aunt" and she to him as "Dear Nephew". This close relationship may have been sealed by the fact that both were illegitimate,Opinion of Fairweather, 2021 Mie-Mie being the natural daughter of William Douglas, 4th Duke of Queensberry by his Italian mistress. "They both suffered the stigma of illegitimacy, at a time when bloodlines in humans were as important as in horses. They both had to endure whispered gossip the moment they turned their backs, and the trail of scandal wherever they went" (Fairweather, 2021).Mark Fairweather, "The Sudbourne Hall Estate", Rendlesham Parish Magazine, Issue 113, March 2021, pp.6-8 Long after her death Wallace erected a monument to Mie-Mie in Sudbourne Church (the only one there to a Hertford in 120 years of residence)Fairweather in the form of the stained-glass east window depicting Mary Magdalene, the prostitute who washed Jesus's feet with oil but was also the first person to witness the Resurrection, which Fairweather (2021) suspected to be "an intentional reference to Mie-Mie's circumstances".

Career Most of his youth and early manhood were spent in Paris, "where as Monsieur Richard he became a well-known figure in French society and among those who devoted themselves to matters of art". He was appointed by the 4th Marquess as his secretary and agent, on a salary of £500, later raised to £1,000.As stated by Sir Richard Wallace during his court case concerning the contested inheritance from the 4th Marquess In this capacity he became expert in assessing, valuing and buying works for the famous collector. Before he was forty he had made his own large collection including objets d'art, bronzes, ivories and miniatures, which he sold profitably in Paris in 1857, in order to pay off debts.Burns

Inheritance In 1870 his father the 4th Marquess died without legitimate issue, and the titles and entailed estates, including Ragley Hall in Warwickshire and Sudbourne, passed under an entail to his second cousin, Francis Seymour who became the 5th Marquess. However Wallace inherited his father's unentailed estates and extensive collection of European art.

Lisburn, County Antrim, Ireland

His vast estate in Lisburn, Northern Ireland, extending to over , produced an annual income of £50,000 (£7 million in 2022). The area was the centre of the flax and linen industry.Wallace spoke in the House of Commons about the constituency's central role in the flax and linen industry When Wallace visited it for the first time after his inheritance, accompanied by his wife and son, he was greeted by a crowd of 20,000 people and was welcomed in an elaborate series of ceremonies by the chief citizens. Even though at that time Lisburn had ceased to be the pocket borough it had been under the Hertford family before the Reform Act 1832, beginning in 1873 Wallace was returned unopposed three times to Westminster as a Conservative Member of Parliament. During his eleven years in the House of Commons, Hansard records but one significant intervention: Wallace spoke in support of an amendment to the Land Law (Ireland) Bill of 1881 defending, in the sale of tenancies, the pre-emptive rights of the landlord.Wallace built a grand residence in the Lisburn for himself, called Wallace House, more exactly intended for his son whom he intended to establish there to perform the functions of a great landlord, designed by the same architect who had remodelled Hertford House. He made many large charitable donations to the town, and was reputedly admired by the inhabitants. After his death various monuments were erected in his memory including two stained glass windows in Lisburn Cathedral, on the south wall of the chancel and on the south wall of the nave, one financed by public subscription, the other by Lady Wallace.lisburn.com In "grateful recognition of his generous interest in the prosperity of the town", in 1892 residents of the town erected a memorial in Castle Gardens. The Wallace Memorial comprises a 40 foot high stone and marble "square-plan tower with a steep crocketed spire topped with a poppy head finial, the front gable bearing a date and coat of arms, niches on each façade, one bearing a bust of the subject above an inscribed tablet, and on a three-stepped octagonal base". It is inscribed: To perpetuate the memory of one whose delight was to do good and in grateful recollection of his generous interest in the prosperity of this town of which it possesses so many proofs this monument is erected to Sir Richard Wallace, Bart., KGI, sometime MP for the Borough of Lisburn, by the inhabitants of the town and neighbourhood Obiit Jul. XX, MDCCCXC.

His bequests to the town included the Wallace Park and the Wallace High School. His town house on Castle Street is now used as offices by the South Eastern Regional College.

Sudbourne

Wallace repurchased Sudbourne from the 5th Marquess, for £298,000."Draft conveyance, 1872, with draft agreements, correspondence and rentals relating to the whole Sudbourne estate, conveyed by the Marquis of Hertford to Sir Richard Wallace for £298,000. - 1870-1872" (Warwickshire Archives, 00302 - SEYMOUR FAMILY OF RAGLEY HALL, ARROW) It was a notable sporting estate of about , which became his English country seatSudbourne Hall, with 50 rooms, owned 1904-1916 by the millionaire parents of Lord Clark), was demolished in 1951. The house and its estate are described in Kenneth Clark, a Biography by Meryle Secrest (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1984) chap. 3, and where he held lavish shooting parties, guests at which included the Prince of Wales. He employed 24 liveried gamekeepers and "a small army of domestic servants" to cater for his shooting guests. He commissioned three large oil paintings by the French artist Alfred Charles Ferdinand Decaen, depicting his shooting parties (On Sudbourne Hill (1874); Shooting Luncheon at the Great Wood Sudbourne (1876); Battue de perdreaux dans la comté de Suffolk (1880)), now displayed in Orford Town Hall. He was Honorary President of Ipswich Museum in Suffolk from 1874 until his death. In 1875 he built a model farm at nearby Chillesford Lodge on the estate, which survives today, displaying on some of the buildings his heraldic crest,Listed building text also visible on several other houses and buildings erected by him on the estate.Jane Allen, Orford off the Beaten Track, published by Orford Museum, 2008 In 1883 he won a silver medal at the Smithfield Show as breeder of the best "Single Pig" in class LXXXVI.He lived at Wickham Market in Suffolk at the time, next to Sudbourne During 1879–82 he restored Sudbourne Church, and presented it with new furnishings.

In 1877 Wallace appointed as Rector of Sudbourne and Orford parish churches Rev. Edward Maude Scott, the brother of his secretary and eventual heir Sir John Murray Scott, 1st Baronet. The latter is buried in Orford Churchyard beneath a tall stone cross within iron railings. Rev. Scott was instrumental in restoring St Bartholomew's Church in Orford between 1894 and 1901. In 1884 Wallace sold Sudbourne to the banker Arthur Heywood, and returned to Paris, having become disappointed in his ambition to found his own aristocratic dynasty due to his son's refusal to live in England and Queen Victoria's refusal to allow the latter to inherit his baronetcy, due to illegitimacy.

Château de Bagatelle