LONDON, ENGLAND.- Pre-Raphaelite and other Masters: The Andrew Lloyd Webber Collection will go on show at the Royal Academy from 20 September to 12 December 2003. Originally intended for a few year’s hence, the show has been brought forward to replace an exhibition of Egyptian art which was planned for the Royal Academy this autumn but which was unavoidably postponed due to the current political instability in the Middle East.

This is the first time that Andrew Lloyd Webber’s collection, one of the finest of its type in private hands, has been shown in public. Andrew Lloyd Webber developed a passion for Victorian art and architecture at an early age, long before it was fashionable. The collection now includes important holdings of paintings and drawings by Burne-Jones, Millais, Rossetti, Waterhouse, Atkinson Grimshaw and Tissot, as well as significant examples of works by Richard Dadd, Frederic Lord Leighton, Holman Hunt, John Brett, Alma-Tadema, and Luke Fildes. These are complemented by outstanding examples of decorative arts of the period, including furniture by Pugin and Burges, ceramics by Willam de Morgan and tapestries designed by Burne-Jones and executed by the workshop of William Morris and Co. Andrew Lloyd Webber has expanded the historical range of the collection to include Canaletto’s view of Old Horseguard’s Parade, Sir Joshua Reynolds’s Portrait of George IV, Stanley Spencer’s Self-Portrait and On the Tiger Rug, and Picasso’s masterpiece Angel Fernandez de Soto.

Professor Phillip King, President of the Royal Academy, said: “We are enormously grateful to Andrew Lloyd Webber for lending his collection to the Royal Academy and for bringing forward an exhibition originally planned for a few years time. Understandably Andrew Lloyd Webber receives numerous requests to view his collection. We are therefore particularly delighted that it will be shown to the public for the first time at the Royal Academy.”

Andrew Lloyd Webber said: "I am delighted to be able to help the Royal Academy by bringing forward plans for an exhibition of my collection. It will be fantastic to see the collection together in one place in this way. I sincerely hope that it will give as much pleasure to those who visit the exhibition as it has given me, my family and friends, over many years.”