Wynn Ellis was a haberdasher, hosier and mercer at 16 Ludgate Street, where he gradually created the largest silk business in London and became extremely wealthy. He acquired the manor of Ponsborne Park, Hertfordshire in 1836 and formed a major collection of pictures, many of which are described in Waagen 1854 (vol. 2, pp. 293-98). He left his whole collection of Old Master pictures to the English nation but the Trustees of the National Gallery selected only 44 of them, which have since been exhibited as the Wynn Ellis collection. The remainder, including paintings by Wilson, Gainsborough, Reynolds, Turner and Wilkie, plus watercolours, porcelain and decorative furniture, were disposed of at Christie, Manson & Wood's in five separate days of sales from 6 May to 15 July 1876.
Ellis owned 14 paintings by or attributed to Wilson including:
P90 The Destruction of the Children of Niobe, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
P132 View of Windsor Forest, Anglesey Abbey, National Trust
P162B Cicero, Atticus and Quintus at his Villa at Arpinum, Private Collection, London
P177B Evening: River Scene with Cattle, Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Probably P82F The Bridge of Augustus at Rimini, House-Museum Medeiros e Almeida, Lisbon
Ascribed to Wilson, Acqua Acetosa, on the Tiber, National Museum Wales, Cardiff (NMW A 5196)
