Leighton House, once the London home of Lord Leighton, is mounting its most ambitious exhibition since it opened as a museum in 1900. The permanent collection will go into storage to provide space to display 50 Victorian paintings belonging to the Mexican businessman Juan Antonio Pérez Simón.

Pérez Simón, who has long been in business partnership with the telecommunications tycoon and fellow art collector Carlos Slim, has been buying Victorian art since the 1980s, almost entirely at Christie’s and Sotheby’s.