Hall of fame: the temporary return of Sir Robert Walpole's outstanding picture collection to Houghton Hall has posed unique challenges to exhibition organisers. The process of securing loans and reconstructing Walpole's hang has given rise to numerous surprises.
Unlike other major collections of the period, the Walpole collection was conceived by one man and largely assembled over fewer than three decades, with the assistance of able agents in England and Europe. Sir Robert Walpole (1676-1745) devoted the greater part of his vast income to purchasing the best pictures then available, and devising to house them in a magnificent temple of stone, marble and mahogany, the present Houghton Hall.His lavish spending would eventually cause the collapse of the family fortune and provoke the sale of the collection in 1779 by his spendthrift and gambler grandson, the 3rd Earl of Orford. By a remarkable twist of fate, the collection was sold almost in its entirety to Empress Catherine the Great of Russia and has been kept largely intact and in one place--the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg--ever since. Of the 204 paintings sold to Catherine, 145 remain at the Hermitage; most of the others are housed at other Russian museums, at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
Four main reasons prompted the idea of the temporary return of the collection to its original home: the collection was exceptional both in quality and variety; it had been formed with particular care, dedication and method and was still more or less kept in one place; Houghton Hall, which had been specifically designed to display the collection, was still intact; and finally, the records of the collection were not only still available, but also extraordinarily detailed, which would allow a faithful reconstruction. The learned collaboration and assistance of both Lord Cholmondeley, Walpole's descendent and the current owner of Houghton, and the director and staff of the State Hermitage Museum, have since helped to make possible the reunion of Houghton with its original collection.
By the time the project was initiated in 2010, there had already been two exhibitions in the UK devoted to the Walpole collection; one held at Norwich Castle Museum and Kenwood House in 1996-97, the other at Somerset House in 2000-01, launching what was to become the sadly short-lived London offshoot of the Hermitage. Both exhibitions were accompanied by outstanding academic research undertaken in both England and Russia by Brian Allen, Andrew Moore and Larissa Dukelskaya, working with the assistance of most of the curators of paintings at the Hermitage, as well as those of the other museums that house works formerly in the Walpole collection.
Their expertise has once again been crucial in the Houghton Hall project, which represents both the most complete reconstruction of Walpole's collection in England and the first attempt to restore Houghton to its 18th-century character. Meanwhile, the catalogue raisonne of the collection (Yale, 2002) provided a solid basis on which to start the recreation of the hang in the State Rooms at Houghton; nonetheless, further research was also required to gain a complete picture of the original arrangement of the collection.
Anticipating a possible refusal of such a demanding request, the first proposal to the Hermitage included only those paintings originally hung in the Saloon. This was the grandest room on the piano nobile at Houghton (Fig. 2). The response was highly encouraging, if also slightly disappointing, in that two of the major pictures formerly in the Saloon, The Feast in the House of Simon the Pharisee (c. 1620) by Rubens and Van Dyck and The Rest on the Flight to Egypt (c. 1629-31) by Van Dyck with Paul De Vos, were not allowed to travel owing to their fragile condition; the same applied to Francesco Albani's Baptism of Christ (c. 1640). It became clear that an exact reconstruction of the 1745 hang of the Saloon would be impossible. This prompted the elaboration of the project on a larger scale, so that the lacunae would be less apparent and the general spirit and historical appearance of the collection could be felt more palpably. The present article will concentrate not on the ensuing negotiations and practicalities, but rather on the manner in which the desired sense of authenticity has been sought for the return of this seminal collection to its original setting.
Houghton Hall was built over a period of 20 years and largely conceived by Colen Campbell, James Gibbs and William Kent (see Feature, pp. 26-34). The architect and designer William Kent (c. 1685-1748) was entrusted with the interiors, for which he provided not only the designs but also the extensive painted decoration. Kent was already a familiar of Walpole's entourage and had designed the interiors of 10 Downing Street for him. Isaac Ware's surviving drawing of Downing Street, today in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, not only recorded the shape and function of each room but also the paintings hung there, and if it is impossible to prove that Kent advised Walpole in the hang, it shows, at least, that he was familiar with the collection and thought that the position of each painting was worth documenting.
Kent's crucial role in the display of the paintings at Houghton is in fact recorded in drawings that he made of the planned hang of the Saloon (Figs. 3 & 4). These clearly show that he intended the Saloon to receive some of the largest compositions in the collection; in this instance, the large-scale market scenes by the Flemish painter, Frans Snyders. The Saloon, with its ceiling of double height, was, together with the Stone Hall, the largest and grandest of the State Rooms.
By the time the 'spoils of Downing Street' --as Horace Walpole (1717-97) described them--joined the rest of the collection at Houghton in 1743, Sir Robert's youngest son had become a fully fledged art lover and aesthete, and enjoyed his father's respect and consideration in all matters artistic. We know from his correspondence with his mentor Horace Mann (1706-86), the English diplomatic representative to the Grand Dukes of Tuscany, that Horace was called to Norfolk in May that year to assist his father in the delicate task of rehanging the collection at Houghton: 'I go in three weeks to Norfolk; the only place that could make me wish to live at St. James's. My Lord has pressed me so much, that I could not with decency refuse; he is going to furnish and hang his picture gallery, and wants me. I can't help wishing that I had never known a Guido from a Teniers--but who could ever suspect any connection between painting and the wilds of Norfolk?'
Returning to the catalogue raisonne and the available documentary sources, it would appear that the hang of the rooms was at its most impressive following Sir Robert Walpole's retirement from his position as the country's first de facto Prime Minister. By then, he had left his residence of 10 Downing Street and had sent his 140 paintings to Houghton. The year 1743 therefore represents a unique moment in the collection's history, since it was when almost all of Walpole's masterpieces were first arranged in their intended setting, and the collection looked at its best. On a practical level, it was also simpler to frame loan requests from a list of those paintings which were known to grace the walls of their respective rooms at this specific time.
Quite remarkably, the State Rooms of the piano nobile were still for the most part preserved in the original state in which Walpole had known them. Only two had been slightly modified since the death of Sir Robert: the Cabinet Room and the Carlo Maratta Room. The former had been adorned with a superb hand-painted blue chinoiserie wallpaper in the late 18th century, while the latter had been rehung with a delicate flower-embroidered white silk cover, given to the Cholmondeley family at a similar date by the Prince Regent.
It quickly became apparent that recreating the Cabinet Room, which had contained no fewer than 34 small precious pictures, and a portrait by Rubens of Helen Fourment (c. 1630-32; today in the Calouste Gulbenkian collection) would prove a difficult, if not impossible, task. The lending museums would reasonably object to so many loans, and the blue wallpaper was not only too fragile to be hung with so many pictures but also did not correspond with the room's appearance in Walpole's period. Furthermore, the loan of Rubens's celebrated portrait of his wife was refused since it was painted on board, the most fragile of supports, and was susceptible both to damage in transportation and to environmental changes.
We know from original drawings at Houghton that the portrait of Helen Fourment was placed above the chimneypiece, and it became obvious that the frame of the looking glass that now hangs in its place had some features in common with the style of the mouldings which William Kent had created all over the house. Measuring the outer borders of the bevelled glass, I was surprised to discover that it corresponded exactly to the dimensions of the portrait of Helen Fourment. In other words, the original William Kent frame of the portrait had been kept at Houghton since the sale of the collection. Given these exceptional circumstances, the decision was taken to replace the looking glass with a reproduction of the painting. The painted ceiling, marble chimneypiece and mouldings that surrounded the painting are still original, providing significant justification for this illusionistic exercise.
The Carlo Maratta Room presented a different challenge. The fine silk panels could not be removed without peril, but their late 18th-century character was not in keeping with Horace Walpole's descriptions of the room in his Aedes Walpolianae (1747), which state that the room was hung with green velvet. Additional panels covered in this material have therefore been made and placed above the silk ones, while a picture rail has been fixed on the top part of the walls.
This room was crucial to planning the exhibition; Carlo Maratta (1625-1713), in the early 18th century one of the most fashionable artists in Rome and Europe, was described by Horace Walpole as his father's 'favourite artist'. Sir Robert had gathered a unique group of works by Maratta and his best followers and pupils, which were assembled in this room to great effect. They included one of Maratta's most celebrated masterpieces, the portrait of Pope Clement IX (1669), which during the exhibtion will again dominate the room with its august presence above the chimneypiece, and two large canvases representing the scenes of The Judgement of Paris (1708; Fig. 7) and Acis and Galatea (1713?) Interestingly, the original hang combined works with subjects inspired by ancient mythology with devotional paintings imbued with high catholic sensibilities.
The reunion of this ensemble was perhaps the most complicated to achieve, since these particular pictures are now dispersed all over the vast territories of Russia and two of them are located in the most inaccessible of places. Acis and Galatea is kept in the Far East Museum of Fine Arts in Khabarovsk, in other words closer to China than to Moscow. Its pendant painting, The Judgement of Paris, was placed, after the post-war reconstruction of the Catherine Palace in Tsarskoye Selo, on the ceiling of the imperial staircase to replace a lost work of the same school and dimension. It is only thanks to the understanding of the director and curators of the Tsarskoye Selo State Museum-Preserve and the generosity of a sponsor that this painting was allowed to leave the Catherine Palace for the first time since the reconstruction of the palace, and Russia for the first time since its arrival in 1779. A gigantic scaffold was erected in March this year and the painting was taken down by a team of specialists who bravely removed it from its stuccoed frame and replaced it with a photographic copy laid on canvas (Fig. 8).
Most of the paintings in the Carlo Maratta Room will return for the exhibition. The portrait of Pope Clement and the two large mythological compositions are the only works whose exact original positions in the room are known; the others will be displayed rather closely hung, so as to maximise their impact and the harmony of tones, colours and compositions of each wall. This is where, perhaps, the recreation of the historic hang owes more to common sense, artistic sensibility, and a personal if informed interpretation of Kent and Walpole's scheme than to absolute archival justification.
The reconstruction of the hang of the Common Parlour prompted another set of questions. Many key paintings are being lent, though not the complete list. When paintings are hung densely, any missing work creates an unsightly space; here, the inevitable gaps necessitated rethinking. A drawing found in 1980 by Lord Cholmondeley in a secret drawer of Walpole's desk offered an invaluable guide; it shows many of the paintings listed in the inventory featured in their intended or actual position on the wall. The objective became to follow this model as closely as possible, ensuring the impact of the most important paintings--as Walpole would have conceived them--while preserving the general harmony.
The obvious starting point in such reconstructions is often the fireplace. Among the few works of art that Walpole had salvaged from his father's house was a beautifully carved wooden frieze by the sculptor Grinling Gibbons (1648-1721) which either he or Kent decided to place above the fireplace, where it could fittingly adorn Godfrey Kneller's exceptional portrait of Gibbons himself. Two Lely portraits, which were originally placed as overdoors on this wall, have generously been lent from Newport, Rhode Island, and New York. Two further Kneller portraits will flank that of Gibbons. The first, the portrait of Joseph Carreras (c. 1675; Fig. 6) is in fact the only painting to have returned to Houghton for good since the 1779 sale. Sold by Emperor Nicholas I in 1854, it was later purchased by Lady Sybil Cholmondeley, the present Marquess's grandmother, in 1975. The second is a portrait of Locke (1697), a counterpoint to the image of the Spanish poet and thinker. Two other masterpieces, a Rembrandt from the Pushkin Museum--which Walpole believed to be a portrait of Rembrandt's wife--and Van Dyck's powerful portrait of Lord Chaloner (1638-40) will be displayed in prime positions on either side of the chimneypiece.
The composition of the two other walls will centre around the largest paintings in the room: Jacob Jordaens' Self-Portrait with Parents, Brothers and Sisters (c. 1615) and David Teniers' Kitchen (1646). The drawings of the successive picture hang at Houghton give us many clues as to the guiding principles behind the overall scheme; there is, for example, a definite care for symmetry. Framing was also of major importance to the scheme and Kent took particular care in designing carved and gilded frames that would complement the decorative elements of the room. Ornaments typical of Kent's artistic language --including the frieze of egg and dart, scallop shells and acanthus leaves--enhanced the canvases. Only a handful of these frames can be traced. Murillo's Immaculate Conception (or Assumption of the Virgin; c. 1680), now in the Hermitage, still has Kent's original frame, and will return to its former position above the left door on the south wall of the Saloon. Similarly, Poussin's Holy Family with St Elizabeth and John the Baptist (1644-55; Fig. 1)--one of Walpole's 'capital' paintings--will be reinserted into its original frame, which was left at Houghton following the 1779 sale. It appears that Catherine the Great either did not wish to possess the frames, or it was simply more convenient to ship the paintings to St Petersburg without them. Records show that when she purchased the collection of Count Bruhl (1700-63) in 1768, she left the frames behind, commissioning 310 carved and gilded frames in the then fashionable Louis XV style.
The Saloon will be restored to its former glory. The large paintings that once hung over the doors of the south and north walls of this room will regain their original positions. One of the pictures that Walpole particularly treasured, Salvator Rosa's Prodigal Son (1651-55; Fig. 5), will occupy pride of place above the black marble chimneypiece. It will be echoed on the east wall by a mysterious portrait by Rosa, the title of which has changed throughout the centuries; described as a Man's Head by Horace Walpole in his Aedes it became a Captain of Banditti in Boydell's album of prints (1775) and was later regarded as a self-portrait.
As substitutes for Van Dyck's Rest on the Flight into Egypt and Rubens's Feast in the House of Simon the Pharisee, once situated on either side of the doorway leading to the Stone Hall, two mythological pictures by Luca Giordano have been chosen; they correspond with those works in size and monumentality. The Stoning of St Stephen, a 17th-century work by Thomas Gousse that is too fragile to travel, will be replaced by the only picture in the exhibition that was not owned by Walpole; this is Charles Errard's Tancred and Erminia (c. 1644), purchased by the present Lord Cholmondeley as a tribute to his ancestor's collection. The dialogue between religious and profane subject matter will be maintained, as will the hang and the subtle harmony of palettes and schools. The effect will be further enhanced by the original wall covering, a silk and wool red caffoy in remarkable condition, together with Kent's carved and gilded furniture, looking glasses, cornices and painted ceiling.
The Marble Parlour, one of the first dining rooms in England, will not only regain its original hang, with paintings by Van Dyck, Veronese and Michele Pace del Campidoglio, but will also revert to its original furnishings. The Embroidered Bed Chamber (Fig. 9), the Green Velvet Bedchamber and the Tapestry Dressing Room will similarly be recreated.
This exhibition is not, therefore, simply an attempt to assemble a unique selection of masterpieces formerly owned by a major figure in British history. Rather, it represents an effort to resurrect not only the appearance but also the underlying aesthetic of one of the grandest collections of the past, displayed once again in one of the most successful interiors ever created in Britain, and devoted to 'taste, expence, state and parade'.
Thierry Morel is the curator of 'Houghton Revisited' (17 May-29 September). Visit www.houghtonrevisited.com for more.
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| Title Annotation: | FEATURE: HOUGHTON HALL |
|---|---|
| Author: | Morel, Thierry |
| Publication: | Apollo |
| Article Type: | Essay |
| Geographic Code: | 4EUUK |
| Date: | May 1, 2013 |
| Words: | 3030 |
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