The Trust was set up in 1995 to carry out the charitable directives of its founding benefactor, the late George Lester Winward, by taking over the ownership of his art collection and making it permanently available for study by art students and researchers, as an educational resource for art appreciation.

The collection comprises a variety of paintings, drawings, etchings and prints. Works range from the sixteenth century Italian School to British and Continental pictures of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. There are some Dutch and Flemish genre pictures from the seventeenth century, works from the eighteenth century English School and some Victorian watercolours. They are mostly small in scale and include a number of miniatures. In some cases, works require conservation and authentication and it is this process which the collector saw as being of value to students of art appreciation. The Tondo and the collection are not as yet on display and are in secure repositories in London and in Liverpool whilst the subject of ongoing research.

The collector's greatest affection was for the life and works of Thomas Gainsborough. The collection contains oil paintings in his style and it is an aim of the Trust to promote further study of this much-loved artist.