One of the most successful art dealerships of Georgian London was a partnership between a Frenchman, Noël Desenfans, and his younger Swiss friend, Sir Francis Bourgeois. The enterprise appears to have been launched by the dowry of Desenfans's Welsh wife Margaret Morris. The three lived together in a house in Charlotte (now Hallam) Street, where they entertained with a well-heeled informality vividly suggested by Paul Sandby's small watercolour portrait.

The greatest moment in the career of the Bourgeois-Desenfans partnership came in 1790 when they were commissioned by Stanislaus Augustus, King of Poland, to form from scratch a Royal Collection-cum-National Gallery in order to 'encourage the progress of the fine arts in Poland.' They devoted the next five years exclusively to this task, during which time Poland was gradually partitioned by its more powerful neighbours, leading in 1795 to its complete disappearance as an independent state. The King was forced to abdicate and the dealers were left with a royal collection on their hands.

It is a testament to the pair's earlier success that this debacle did not ruin them. They devoted the rest of their lives in two parallel tasks. In private they sold individual works from their Polish stock (beautifully displayed at Charlotte Street) and replaced them with further important purchases. In public they sought a home for their complete and intact 'Royal Collection', approaching amongst others the Tzar of Russia and the British Government. When it became obvious that they would be unable to sell the collection in its entirety, they began to seek suitable institutions to which to bequeath it, especially after Desenfans's death in 1807 when Bourgeois became sole owner. In the absence (until 1824) of a British National Gallery, the obvious candidate was the British Museum, but Bourgeois found its trustees too 'arbitrary' and 'aristocratic' (both loaded words in the era of the French Revolution). Instead he decided to leave his collection to Dulwich College, clearly stating that the paintings should be on public display.

Dulwich Picture Gallery was therefore founded by the terms of Sir Francis Bourgeois's will upon his death in 1811. Thus came into being England's first public art gallery.