The Walpole collection was a collection of paintings and other works of art at Houghton Hall in Norfolk and at other residences of Sir Robert Walpole. Many of the important works were sold in 1779 to Catherine the Great of Russia, and the Hermitage Museum still owns more than 120 works from the collection.
The collection was put together by Sir Robert Walpole, Britain's first prime minister, and housed at Houghton Hall and his other residences. [1] [2] It included paintings by Anthony van Dyck, Nicholas Poussin, Peter Paul Rubens, and Rembrandt, [3] as well as a number of portraits of family members. Many of the portraits and some of the other paintings came from the collection of the Wharton family which Walpole reputedly bought for £1500. [4] [5] These included royal portraits and family portraits by Peter Lely and van Dyck (such as the double portrait of Philadelphia and Elisabeth Wharton). Walpole bought the complete collection, most of which went to Houghton, but a few of which were sold. [5] Walpole's sons were active in obtaining works for his collection. He also received gifts from friends and from those seeking support or honours. [6]
Walpole's collection of marble Roman busts was also noteworthy [7] and the collection included a pair of silver wine coolers by William Lukin that are now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. [8]
Horace Walpole, son of Sir Robert, published a catalogue of the collection in 1736. [9]
Following the death of Robert Walpole, 2nd Earl of Orford, in 1751, "a lesser part of the collection" was sold at auction by George Walpole, 3rd Earl of Orford. [5]
In 1777, John Wilkes tried (but failed) to persuade parliament to buy the collection for the nation. [10] Many of the Old Master paintings subsequently went to the Hermitage Museum having been sold by the 3rd Earl to Catherine the Great in 1779 for £40,550 (equivalent to £6,875,236in 2023). [11] [5]
In total 206 works travelled from Houghton to the Hermitage. [12] Many of these remain in the Hermitage, but some subsequently passed to other Russian museums. [13] Some items from the collection were sold in 1853, including a portrait of Joseph Carreras by Sir Godfrey Kneller which returned to Houghton Hall. [14] Further sales took place in the 1930s. During the 2nd World War, the collection was stored for protection in Sverdlovsk. The collection returned to the Hermitage in 1946 and it still owns 127 works from the collection.
Some works remained at Houghton after the sale to Catherine including Thomas Gainsborough's oil painting of his own family -- Thomas Gainsborough, with His Wife and Elder Daughter, Mary [15] (circa 1751–1752).
From September 2002 to February 2003 34 pictures from the collection were displayed at the Hermitage Rooms of Somerset House, on loan from the Hermitage Museum. [16]
From 17 May 2013, until 24 November 2013, 70 pictures [17] from the Hermitage and other museums that were part of the collection were loaned to Houghton Hall to be exhibited in their original settings. [18]
Horatio Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford, better known as Horace Walpole, was an English writer, art historian, man of letters, antiquarian, and Whig politician.
Thomas Gainsborough was an English portrait and landscape painter, draughtsman, and printmaker. Along with his rival Sir Joshua Reynolds, he is considered one of the most important British artists of the second half of the 18th century. He painted quickly, and the works of his maturity are characterised by a light palette and easy strokes. Despite being a prolific portrait painter, Gainsborough gained greater satisfaction from his landscapes. He is credited as the originator of the 18th-century British landscape school. Gainsborough was a founding member of the Royal Academy.
Robert Walpole, 1st Earl of Orford,, known between 1725 and 1742 as Sir Robert Walpole, was a British Whig politician who served as Prime Minister of Great Britain from 1721 to 1742. He also served as First Lord of the Treasury, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Leader of the House of Commons, and is generally regarded as the de facto first prime minister of Great Britain.
The State Hermitage Museum is a museum of art and culture in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It was founded in 1764 when Empress Catherine the Great acquired a collection of paintings from the Berlin merchant Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky. The museum celebrates the anniversary of its founding each year on 7 December, Saint Catherine's Day. It has been open to the public since 1852. The Art Newspaper ranked the museum 10th in their list of the most visited art museums, with 2,812,913 visitors in 2022.
Sir Anthony van Dyck was a Flemish Baroque artist who became the leading court painter in England after success in the Spanish Netherlands and Italy.
Dulwich Picture Gallery is an art gallery in Dulwich, south London. It opened to the public in 1817 and was designed by the Regency architect Sir John Soane. His design was recognized for its innovative and influential method of illumination for viewing the art. It is the oldest public art gallery in England and was made an independent charitable trust in 1994. Until then, the gallery was part of the College of God's Gift, a charitable foundation established by the actor, entrepreneur and philanthropist Edward Alleyn in the early 17th century. The acquisition of artworks by its founders and bequests from its many patrons resulted in Dulwich Picture Gallery housing one of the country's finest collections of Old Masters, especially rich in French, Italian and Spanish Baroque paintings, and in British portraits from the Tudor era to the 19th century.
The Wallace Collection is a museum in London occupying Hertford House in Manchester Square, the former townhouse of the Seymour family, Marquesses of Hertford. It is named after Sir Richard Wallace, who built the extensive collection, along with the Marquesses of Hertford, in the 18th and 19th centuries. The collection features fine and decorative arts from the 15th to the 19th centuries with important holdings of French 18th-century paintings, furniture, arms and armour, porcelain and Old Master paintings arranged into 25 galleries. It is open to the public and entry is free.
Houghton Hall is a country house in the parish of Houghton in Norfolk, England. It is the residence of the 7th Marquess of Cholmondeley.
Cornelius Johnson was an English painter of portraits of Dutch or Flemish parentage. He was active in England, from at least 1618 to 1643, when he moved to Middelburg in the Netherlands to escape the English Civil War. Between 1646 and 1652 he lived in Amsterdam, before settling in Utrecht, where he died.
Sir Oliver Nicholas Millar was a British art historian. He was an expert on 17th-century British painting, and a leading authority on Anthony van Dyck in particular. He served in the Royal Household for 41 years from 1947, becoming Surveyor of The Queen's Pictures in 1972. He was the first Director of the Royal Collection from 1987. He served in both offices until his retirement in 1988.
The Soviet sale of Hermitage paintings in 1930 and 1931 resulted in the departure of some of the most valuable paintings from the collection of the State Hermitage Museum in Leningrad to Western museums. Several of the paintings had been in the Hermitage Collection since its creation by Empress Catherine the Great. About 250 paintings were sold, including masterpieces by Jan van Eyck, Titian, Rembrandt, Rubens, Raphael, and other important artists. Andrew Mellon donated the twenty-one paintings he purchased from the Hermitage to the United States government in 1937, which became the nucleus of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
George Walpole, 3rd Earl of Orford, was a British administrator, politician, and peer.
Thomas Patch was an English painter, printmaker in etching, physiognomist and art historian. He made a living from painting views of Florence and Tivoli and appears to have sold a number of painted caricature groups to members of the Anglo-Florentine community and to young British men on the Grand Tour. The largest collection of his paintings and prints is in the Lewis Walpole Library in Farmington, Connecticut.
Bartholomew Dandridge was an English portrait painter.
Hamlet Winstanley (1698–1756) was an English painter, engraver and art agent. As a painter, he was mainly active as a portraitist and copyist.
The Lenthall pictures were a number of paintings owned by the Lenthall family and housed at Burford Priory. The collection was publicly commented on by art historians and tourists. It was largely dispersed in two sales in 1808 and 1833, although some works were retained by the family and sold in the late 20th century.
Sir Richard Brinsley Ford was a British art historian, scholar, and collector. He inherited a large collection of art from his family and was himself an avid collector. A drawing that he purchased in 1936 was sold by his estate for $12 million in 2000. Ford was the director of the Burlington Magazine, president of Walpole Society and chaired the National Art Collections Fund. During World War II he was a Troop Sergeant-Major in the Royal Artillery and then served in the military intelligence organisation, MI9.
Gainsborough's House is the birthplace of the leading English painter Thomas Gainsborough. It is now a museum and gallery, located at 46 Gainsborough Street in Sudbury, Suffolk, England. It is a Grade I listed building. Some of the pictures on display have been acquired with the help of the Art Fund.
Portrait of Anne, Countess of Chesterfield is a large oil-on-canvas painting by the English portrait and landscape artist Thomas Gainsborough, completed between 1777 and 1778. It shows Anne Stanhope, wife of Philip Stanhope, 5th Earl of Chesterfield, sitting in a blue and while satin dress, sitting in a garden, and is one of the best known of Gainsborough's many portraits of English aristocrats.
La Boudeuse is the modern title given to an oil on canvas painting in the Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, by the French Rococo painter Antoine Watteau (1684–1721). Completed in the late 1710s, La Boudeuse depicts a young couple set amidst a park in the foreground, in a rare example of the two-figure landscape composition which is considered one of the best fêtes galantes in Watteau's later work. However, the picture's authenticity was also a subject of scholarly debate, for it had been engraved by English painter Philippe Mercier, once a follower of Watteau, and was not included in Jean de Jullienne's edition of Watteau's work published in the 1730s.