It is owned by the Bettoja family, which also runs the Mediterraneo across the street, and is done throughout the public rooms in fin de siècle décor, rich in reds and golds, with a distinguished collection of paintings from the Risorgimento period of Italy's unification, including a self-portrait of painter-statesman Massimo d'Azeglio himself.
Further investigation suggested that my "Hooke" portrait might have been one of a series of paintings of distinguished scientists, by an unknown artist, commissioned for the invalid intellectual Lady Conway by Van Helmont's son, Francis Mercury van Helmont.
"The breed of the hesitant and the weak...of those...who believe in telling the truth but rather than tell a distinguished painter that his paintings are daubs will praise him politely," he wrote, "this breed of the inconsistent is still one of the main hopes for the continued survival of the human race".
But in 19th-century America, even in the paintings of distinguished families, they seem to be something else: transitory representations of what once was and what might yet be again, an ideal focus of attention for an art form possessed by the passing of time and the hope that time might, eventually, yield fruit.
The walls are complemented by distinguished antiques and by oil paintings from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries.
The most distinguished and famous of the Orientalist paintings is Jean Leon Gerome's "The Slave Market" which shows how easily Orientalism of the day could be combined with the taste for violated innocence and female subjection.
With a distinguished collection of American and European art, particularly French Impressionist paintings, the Clark looks like a formal art museum, but its 140-acre campus offers hiking trails and picnicking.
And if that wasn't enough, there's an extra attraction in where these paintings are being shown., The Wallace Collection is a distinguished, old-fashioned venue, and chosen precisely as a traditionalist setting, to stress the way these new paintings have a place in the great tradition.
Alice King, who runs one of Hong Kong's most distinguished 20th-century art galleries, Alisan, recently took a show of paintings by Chao Chung-hsiang to the National Art Museum of China in Beijing, and the Shanghai Art Museum.
The room, in the heart of the gallery, is hosting an exhibition of paintings, drawings and prints by Leon Kossoff, one of the most distinguished artists working today.
