Sir William Burrell (9 July 1861 - 29 March 1958) was one of the world’s great art collectors. He and his wife Constance, Lady Burrell (1875–1961), created a collection of over 8,000 artworks which they gave to their home city of Glasgow, Scotland, in 1944, in what has been described as ‘one of the greatest gifts ever made to any city in the world’. It is displayed at the Burrell Collection museum in Glasgow. Biography Born on 9 July 1861 in Glasgow, Burrell was the third of nine children to ship owner William Burrell (1832–1885) and Isabella Duncan (née Guthrie). Burrell's grandfather, George Burrell, had founded a shipping firm which became known as Burrell & Son. William Burrell was born into a prosperous middle-class family of ship owners. He joined this business in 1875, at the age of 14. When his father died in 1885, he and his brother George took over the business while still in their twenties and transformed it into one of the leading cargo shipping companies in Britain. William had a natural flair for business and earned himself a sizeable fortune. The bulk of his wealth came during the First World War when he sold most of his ships for many times more than what he had paid for them. Burrell had developed an interest in art as a boy and he used his wealth to steadily build his collection, quickly surpassing his local contemporaries in terms of the quantity and quality of his artworks and firmly established an international reputation as a collector of good taste and judgement. Burrell had an innate talent for art collecting. He understood what he was buying, and his refined taste led him to areas that other collectors dared not touch. His primary passion was for Gothic art and he built an outstanding collection of medieval and Renaissance tapestries, stained glass and furniture. His collection of Chinese bronzes and ceramics is one of the most comprehensive in the country, and his collection of French Impressionists contains numerous masterpieces by Manet, Cézanne and especially Degas. He was a faithful patron of Scottish artists including Joseph Crawhall II, George Henry and John Lavery. He commissioned Lavery to paint a portrait of his sister Mary Burrell in 1896. This portrait was exhibited widely and is considered one of Lavery's finest works. Burrell used his wealth to advance himself in society and to purchase