From the beginning the South Kensington Museum (which was to become the V&A) borrowed objects from institutions and private owners. These loans, in addition to supplementing the Museum’s own relatively modest collections, offered the prospect that the loans might be converted to gifts.

In 1862, this practice was extended to include a special exhibition of over 9,000 works on loan from 553 persons. Organised by J. C. Robinson, the Superintendent of the Art Collections, the Special Exhibition of Works of Art of the Mediaeval, Renaissance, and more recent periods, on loan at The South Kensington Museum was intended to take advantage of the great increase in visitors that both the opening of the International Exhibition of 1862 and the opening of the Museum’s newly constructed galleries would generate.

The exhibition attracted almost 900,000 visitors and many of the objects included in this display remained on loan for the greater part of 1863. The Illustrated London News profiled the loan collections in its 21 June 1862 and 17 January 1863 issues. Following the success of this exhibition, further loan exhibitions of a smaller and more specialist nature were organised.