'An elegant memorial catalogue' - The Evening Standard

In an act of extraordinary generosity, the collector and philanthropist Simon Sainsbury (1930-2006) left one of the most significant bequests of art to public collections of the post-war years. Tate and The National Gallery are the joint beneficiaries of an extraordinary collection of paintings, ranging from seventeenth-century British works to masterpieces of French Impressionism and twentieth-century art. Five paintings, by Edgar Degas, Paul Gauguin, Claude Monet and Henri Rousseau, have been given to The National Gallery. Fifteen works, by Francis Bacon, Balthus, Pierre Bonnard, Lucian Freud, Thomas Gainsborough, Victor Pasmore, John Wootton and Johan Zoffany, are added to Tate's collection.

Each of these important works is illustrated in the book, and expert curators from Tate and The National Gallery discuss the impact their arrival has made on the respective collections.