The picture collection of the Lords Kinnaird at Rossie Priory

The paintings acquired by the 7th and 8th Barons Kinnaird in the period c.1795–1828 included some of the finest Old Masters on the market, including works by Titian, Rembrandt and Rubens, and works from the Orléans collection. Mounting debts, however, meant that several were soon sold. Those that remained would eventually be displayed (from c.1825) in the newly built family home, Rossie Priory in Perthshire. There they attracted the attention of Gustav Friedrich Waagen, Wilhelm von Bode, Cornelis Hofstede de Groot and Bernard Berenson. The collection, however, was larger than the reports of these scholars suggested and contained important works they failed to mention. Two sources of information presented here provide fuller knowledge of the pictures in the Priory: a group of early photographs made in the 1850s and 1860s (accessible at https://collections.st-andrews.ac.uk/collection/the-rossie-priory-glass-plate-negative-collection/503453) and an inventory of the contents of the house made in 1878 and reproduced in annotated form in an online Appendix to this article. Between them they document the collection before its dispersal, principally at a London sale in 1946.