William Knox D’Arcy (1849–1917) is remembered today as an indefatigable adventurer, who through financial daring and extraordinary good fortune, became the ‘founder’ of the modern oil industry in the Middle East. However, there is another facet to his life, as the ex-Rockhampton solicitor who became an aspiring and influential art patron who applied his wealth derived from the wildly profitable Mt Morgan gold mine to commission unique furnishings and a suite of famous William Morris tapestries, and to assemble an eclectic collection of contemporary 19th-century British paintings. Dianne Byrne looks at Knox D’Arcy as one of Australia’s major early connoisseurs and collectors and considers his now forgotten contribution to the fledgling collection of the Queensland Art Gallery.