Following six months of curatorial training at the National Gallery in London I’ve now swapped the bagpipers and buskers of Trafalgar Square for the distinguished chimes of the Minster clock to begin the next stage of my traineeship here at York Art Gallery.

Over the next year, I’ll be researching the Lycett Green collection of Italian Old Masters, trying to find out as much as possible about the paintings before the reopening of the Gallery in 2015.

The Lycett Green collection includes some of York’s most celebrated paintings. It spans over 400 years of art history, from intricately crafted gold ground panels dating back to 1350 through to sweeping views of Lucca and Venice from the late 18th Century. It’s a fascinating subject for study, not least because of how it came to be acquired.

F.D. Lycett Green began buying pictures during the 1920s, advised by some of the most famous art historians of the day. By the 1940s, he owned examples from almost every school and period of European Art – a comprehensive collection of over 130 paintings that illustrated the development of style, technique and forms of expression over the course of several centuries. Having bought a large country house in Goudhurst, Kent, Lycett Green set about filling it with his masterpieces.

Like many of his generation, Lycett Green had been badly injured in the First World War, and struggled with poor health for the rest of his life. As his health deteriorated, he began to make arrangements for the future of his art collection. In 1952, he offered it to the National Gallery of South Africa, having moved to Cape Town in the hope that the climate would improve his health. Fortunately for us, this plan fell through. On a trip to York in 1954, Lycett Green paid a visit to the Art Gallery, and, in admiration of the work of its dynamic curator, Hans Hess, offered the collection to York as a loan.

Recognising what a unique opportunity had been presented to him, Hess set about organising a grand exhibition for the following spring. The exhibition opened on 8th March 1955, and at the opening ceremony, Lycett Green announced that he had decided to give the whole collection permanently to York. In one evening, the entire fortunes of the Art Gallery had been transformed.

The acquisition of the Lycett Green collection marked a turning point in York Art Gallery’s story. As the Guardian wrote ‘with this notable addition, York in one stride takes a new place in the front rank of British art collections.’ It therefore seems fitting that it becomes the subject of research once again at this exciting period for the Art Gallery, as we all look forward to the grand reopening in just a year’s time.