The Museums Service has a rich and varied Fine Art Collection of approximately 1,000 oil paintings and 7,000 watercolours and drawings, as well as 7,000 prints and 60 sculptures, which represent over 2,000 artists dating from the fifteenth century to the present day.
The collection is rich in work by the "Suffolk School" and other East Anglian artists, as well as works by modern and contemporary artists. There are also significant topographical works.
The artists represented include: Harry Becker, Colin Moss, Anna Airy, Valerie Thornton, Bernard Reynolds, Samuel Read, Frederic George Cotman, Cor Visser, Valerie Thornton, Leonard Squirrell, Malcolm Moseley, Judith Foster, Pris Fores, Philip Wilson Steer, Lucien Pissarro, Camille Pisarro, John Nash, Cedric Morris, Barbara Hepworth, Elizabeth Frink, Michael Ayrton, Peggy Somerville, Colin Self, John Piper, Victor Pasmore, Edward and Thomas Smythe, Thomas Churchyard, F. G. Cotman, Sir Alfred Munnings, Arnesby Brown, Maggie Hambling and Henry Bright.
The collection contains important paintings by Thomas Gainsborough and John Constable. The Ipswich Collections particular strength is that the work of these two masters can be seen within the context of English and Dutch portrait and landscape traditions. They can also be appreciated through the eyes of their followers.
The Service has the largest collection of Constable oil paintings outside London. The collection includes Golding Constable's Flower Garden, Golding Constable's Kitchen Garden and a rare "conversation piece" Ladies from the Family of Mr Mason of Colchester.
Thomas Gainsborough lived in Ipswich between 1752 and 1759. The collection includes the three quarter length portrait of William Wollaston and Holywells Park, Ipswich, Gainsborough's only known oil landscape of Ipswich. There are also a number works by George Frost who was Gainsborough's keen disciple.