Collected together by a single owner, the pictures in the collection date from the mid-19th century and are connected with the Düsseldorf School of Painting, with works by Andreas Achenbach (1815–1910), Wilhelm Camphausen (1818–1885), Luise Henriette von Martens (1828–1897) and in the manner of Johann Georg Meyer von Bremen (1813–1886).

The Düsseldorf School is considered part of the German Romantic movement, and whilst not having one unified style, the works of its exponents were often finely detailed, extravagant and fanciful landscapes. The term is used to describe the artistic activity from 1826 to 1859 which centred around the Düsseldorf Academy of Fine Arts under the instruction of director Friedrich Wilhelm von Schadow. Andreas Achenbach was one of the earliest and most influential artists of the Academy; Wilhelm Camphausen was an historical and battle painter who was appointed professor at the Academy in 1859; Johann Georg Meyer von Bremen studied there in his twenty-first year; and Luise Henriette von Martens studied at the Academy with Karl Ferdinand Sohn. The reputation of the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf continued into the 20th century, with illustrious alumni including Joseph Beuys, Gerhard Richter and Anselm Kiefer, and Andreas Gursky, and in the 1970s the school became renowned for photography under influential professors Bernd and Hilla Becher.

The collection also includes works by Captain Augustus Savile Lumley (fl.1855–1881) and members of the Ogle family, a prominent landed family in Northumberland. It is possible that the pictures were in the possession of the Ogle family; there are a number of Scottish subjects and a drawing by Sophia Ogle, who married Reverend Hugh Willoughby Jermyn, D.D, Lord Bishop of Brechin and Primus of Scotland.