Although set in a historic house which once belonged to the Rothschild family, Gunnersbury is primarily a local history museum for the London boroughs of Hounslow and Ealing. Paintings are mainly collected because they depict local people, places or activities or are the work of local artists. Most are donated, but the Victoria and Albert Museum Purchase Grant fund has enabled the purchase of some of our more important works. Two major items in the collections are ceiling paintings from local historic mansions. 'The Four Seasons' can still be found in one of the decorative ceilings of the Large Mansion at Gunnersbury. It was commissioned from Edmund Parris by Nathan Mayer Rothschild, probably through his architect Sydney Smirke. Recent cleaning revealed Parris’s signature and the date 1837. Landscapes are collected as topographical records, although 'Brentford Mill', painted by Joseph Nicholls around 1730–1760, seems to reveal some artistic license. Amateur paintings of Gunnersbury Park, however, provide one of the few sources of evidence of the plantings of the 1950s.