Matthew Digby Wyatt came from a family of architects and was a member of the group of Renaissance Revival architects active and influential in London during the Victorian period. As secretary of the executive committee for the Exhibition of 1851, he met Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Owen Jones, with both of whom he later collaborated, the former at Paddington Station and the latter on The Grammar of Ornament (cat. 47). Like Jones and William Morris, Wyatt designed tiles, wallpapers, carpets, and furniture (Jervis 528-29). Wyatt was knighted in recognition of his design of the India Office interiors, while his work as an author on the arts was recognized by his appointment as the first Slade Professor of Art at Cambridge University in 1869. This appointment also gave the Renaissance Revival designers equal representation with the Gothic Revivalists, since John Ruskin became the first Slade Professor at Oxford in the same year.