John Ingamells

Who was John Ingamells?

John Anderson Stuart Ingamells was a British art historian and writer, and former director of the Wallace Collection.

A native of Sussex, Ingamells attended Hastings and Eastbourne Grammar Schools, and subsequently graduated from Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge before undergoing National Service in Cyprus.

Ingamells's career in the arts began in 1959 when he joined York Art Gallery as an art assistant to the curator Hans Hess, and later joined the art department of the National Museum of Wales as assistant keeper in 1963. Ingamells published The Davies Collection of French Art, a catalogue of the National Museum of Wales's French art collection in 1967, and upon its publication returned to York as director of the York Art Gallery. During Ingamells tenure in York he wrote and published articles on the French painter Philippe Mercier, with Robert Raines, and on the Italian portraitist Andrea Soldi for the Walpole Society.

Ingamells joined the Wallace Collection in London as assistant to the collection's director, Terence Hodgkinson, in 1977, before succeeding Hodgkinson as director in 1978.