Impressionist
& Modern Art Sep 12, 2016
Behind Every Great House
By James
Reginato
In his new book, James Reginato explores what makes
historic estates and their modern aristocratic owners so fascinating. One
reason is their centuries-old tradition of collecting art.
https://www.sothebys.com/en/articles/behind-every-great-house
In 1786, as
their carriage rolled up and Blenheim Palace loomed before their eyes, King
George III reportedly gasped to Queen Charlotte, “We have nothing to equal
this.” The astonishing Baroque behemoth was still a relative novelty at the
time – its cornerstone having been laid in June 1705, less than a year after
the 1st Duke of Marlborough’s pivotal victory against the French on the
Bavarian fields of Blenheim. On behalf of a grateful nation, an appreciative
Queen Anne had granted Marlborough and his heirs the 2,000-acre royal manor of
Woodstock, in England. Requiring countless trades- and craftsmen, plus the
Marlborough family’s tireless vigilance, the palace had taken some 30 years to
complete. Ever since then, its sight has awed all visitors.
Blenheim is
just one of the wondrous British estates featured in my new book, Great Houses,
Modern Aristocrats, published by Rizzoli this month. The palace is also
emblematic of the treasure troves of great art – as well as the dedication,
joys and hardships of their owners – that these grand homes have long embodied.
My own
first glimpse of Blenheim filled me with the same wonder that George III felt,
though I pulled up in the back of a school bus.
I was
seventeen, fresh from my hometown of Chicago, and thanks to my generous
parents, in England for a semester of high school. For four months I visited
seemingly every cathedral, minster, museum and great house in England, and I
have adored everything British ever since – except, of course, the separate hot
and cold water taps. A number of years after my school trip, in 2011, I
returned to Blenheim in considerably finer style – and with an overnight bag –
to interview the 11th Duke of Marlborough and his vivacious wife, Lily, for an
article for Vanity Fair. “My famous ancestor won the Battle of Blenheim in one
day, but his descendants have been fighting it ever since,” His Grace told me
with pride and a trace of exasperation.
In the
Saloon, one of the magnificent state rooms at Blenheim, the murals were painted
by French decorative painter Louis Laguerre (1663–1721)
With
experience, I have learned that all great houses elicit similar emotions from
their dedicated owners. Their struggles, ingenuity, devotion and frequently
larger-than-life personalities lie at the heart of my book – as does their art.
Following is a glimpse into what makes the estates and their proprietors so
worthy of our curiosity.
For one
thing, most of these houses have belonged to the same families for centuries.
Take Haddon Hall, for example: By 1200 the Vernons had settled into this
crenellated stone manor house in Derbyshire. Almost 400 yearslater, in 1565,
they married into the Manners family. Fast-forward another 400-plus years, and
Haddon Hall remains in that family’s steady hands. Broughton Castle, a moated
romantic redoubt in Oxfordshire, was last on the real estate market in 1377,
some 75 years after it was built, when Sir John de Broughton snapped it up.
“We’ve been hanging on ever since,” his descendant, the Honourable Martin
Fiennes, told me jocularly. Born in 1961, he is in line to become the 22nd
Baron Saye and Sele, but at the time of this writing, his father, the 95-year-old
21st Baron Saye and Sele, is still a spry presence on the estate. From Blenheim
to Haddon Hall, one thing is clear: A family’s attachment to its great house is
visceral and time-tried.
Another
topic of fascination surrounding these houses is how, after centuries of wars
and famines, economic and social upheaval, certain families have been able to
keep on going so long and so well under the same, and sometimes sprawling,
roofs. In my opinion, there is something in these particular genes. Although
the fecklessness of the English upper class has long been a favourite storyline
in literature and film, my impression has been that the owners of these houses
consistently demonstrate degrees of creativity and industry that are out of the
ordinary. Of course, there are rewards: They get to live in these places. But
running houses like these is never-ending labour, which requires diligence and
constant resourcefulness.
As I
discovered from my visits, living in these houses is largely synonymous with
inhabiting a long-established private museum. Vessels of history and culture,
Britain’s stately homes are stocked with treasure after treasure, many of which
were made in situ. At Goodwood House in West Sussex, seat of the Dukes of
Richmond since 1697, guests today can still marvel at three scenes of the
estate painted by George Stubbs in 1795, a commission from the 3rd Duke of
Richmond. Earlier, in 1746, the 2nd Duke had commissioned from Canaletto two
magnificent views of the Thames, which are also on view.
In Norfolk,
Houghton Hall – begun in 1722 by Britain’s first prime minister, Sir Robert
Walpole – maintains a collection of paintings by Thomas Gainsborough, William
Hogarth and Jacques-Louis David. And that is despite the fact that in 1779,
Catherine the Great swooped in and bought 204 of the house’s pictures, with
which she subsequently formed the core of the State Hermitage Museum in St
Petersburg.
And in
1889, after Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild constructed Waddesdon Manor, a
stupendous French Renaissance-style chateau in Buckinghamshire, he crammed it
with an Aladdin’s cave-worthy assortment of Sèvres porcelain, Renaissance gold
and jewels, French furniture from the reigns of the Louis, Dutch Old Masters
and English 18th-century portraits, all of which are still displayed within its
walls.
It’s worth
noting that not all the properties in my book are on British soil, nor are they
all ancestral stately piles or the owners all British. Villa Cetinale, for
instance, built in 1680 by Cardinal Flavio Chigi, was bought by the 6th Earl of
Durham in 1977 and seems a quintessentially English establishment in spite of
its being located near Siena, in Tuscany. In Scotland in 2007, the over
200-year-old Dumfries House and its peerless collection of Thomas Chippendale
furniture was on the verge of dispersal when His Royal Highness the Prince of
Wales stepped in rather dramatically to save it. On Park Lane in London, His
Highness Sheikh Hamad bin Abdullah Al-Thani of Qatar orchestrated a
six-year-long refurbishment of the magnificent Dudley House – seat of the Earls
of Dudley for more than two centuries – which returned it to perhaps even more
than its original glory.
Yet not all
the art in these great houses dates back centuries, for these homes are not
stuck in time. A brilliant example lies in County Waterford, Ireland, where
William and Laura Cavendish, the energetic Earl and Countess of Burlington,
have transformed a derelict wing of Lismore Castle into Lismore Castle Arts, a
gallery space open to the public that showcases their collection of
cutting-edge contemporary art.
With a
backdrop like this (Sir Walter Raleigh once lived here), such artwork may seem
surprising to some. But the Earl possesses the perspective of five centuries of
family collecting. Just like his forebear the 6th Duke of Devonshire, he is
interested in the art of his time. In the 1820s, the 6th Duke shocked his
contemporaries when he purchased freshly made sculptures of little-clothed
figures from the Rome studio of Antonio Canova and installed them at
Chatsworth.
Interestingly,
the work of one of Britain’s most pre-eminent contemporary artists Lucian
Freud, is on display in several of these great houses. William Cavendish’s
famous grandmother, the late, great Deborah, Dowager Duchess of Devonshire –
the youngest of thecelebrated Mitford sisters, always at the forefront of
contemporary taste – began collecting Freud’s work in the 1950s and sat for a
portrait by him, as did several other subjects of my book, including Lord
Rothschild, Baron Glenconner and the Honorable Garech Browne, chatelain of
Luggala, a Gothicised lodge in County Wicklow, Ireland. His portrait, painted
in 1953 when Browne was 14, hangs there against wallpaper designed by A.W.N.
Pugin. In 1960–1961, Freud painted Bindy Lambton, wife of the 6th Earl of
Durham. The result, Head on a Green Sofa, is considered one the artist’s finest
portraits and fetched nearly £3 million when it sold at Sotheby’s London in
2014. For her part, Lindy, the Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava, was an early
and avid collector of Freud as well as Francis Bacon and David Hockney –
artists she patronised with her late husband, Sheridan. At Clandeboye in
Northern Ireland, she has become an accomplished artist herself, with her own
painting studio.
With such
artistic gems – not to mention remarkable architecture and grounds – it is no
wonder these great houses have long been the subject of curious and repeated
visits. For one thing, I noticed in my research how much artists and writers
enjoy visiting them. Henry James certainly did. He swooned over Haddon Hall –
“of every form of sad desuetude does it contain some delightful example” – as
well as Broughton Castle: “Nothing can be sweeter than to see its clustered
walls of yellow-brown stone so sharply islanded,” he wrote. Though James
admitted to feeling oppressed by the “gilded bondage” of Waddesdon Manor,
complaining that his decidedly social weekends there hindered his literary
output, he returned often, as his six signatures in the Waddesdon visitors’
book attest. And when Her Majesty the Queen came to dinner at Dudley House
recently, she was reportedly dazzled. “This place makes Buckingham Palace look
rather dull,” she is said to have quipped to her host, Sheikh Hamad.
Personally, one of the nicest outcomes of writing about these houses over the
years has been to be asked back to some of them after my articles were
published. When I arrived at Blenheim for a weekend and the housekeeper let me
know that my bags were being sent to my “usual room,” I smiled, thinking of my
very first visit.
James Reginato is writer-at-large for Vanity
Fair.
Photographs
Courtesy of Rizzoli, ©2016 By Jonathan Becker
.jpeg)
.jpeg)
.webp)
.webp)
