June 26, 2015 A new wave of Grand Tourists
Susan Moore
Artworks collected by English milords and the Italianate houses their travels inspired are attracting visitors from around the globe
©Hugo Glendinning Pablo Bronstein at Chatsworth House, Derbyshire
The Grand Tour was a long, leisurely journey round continental Europe culminating in Rome that was seen to complete the education of English gentlemen in the 18th and 19th centuries. The young milords not only brought back art and objets from their travels, but took inspiration to create Italianate country houses and landscapes. Now, these houses and their collections have themselves become the destinations of present-day grand tourists — European, American and, increasingly, Asian. When Taiwanese pop star Jay Chou held his wedding reception at Castle Howard in Yorkshire in January, the stately home’s website received 50m hits. The house — dubbed “Peng Lai Qiong Yu” or “Magnificent Fairyland Palace” — is now firmly on the Asian tourist trail. Castle Howard is one of several historic properties in which the Grand Tour will be celebrated, promoted and reimagined this summer. At Chatsworth in Derbyshire, for instance, the Duke of Devonshire has invited the Argentine-born artist Pablo Bronstein to both make a series of works in response to the Baroque house and its contents, and to curate an installation of its treasures at Nottingham Contemporary that is not so much an evocation as a “hallucination” of Chatsworth. ©Mike Kipling Castle Howard, Yorkshire
Nearby, the traditionally very private historic collections of the Dukes of Portland at Welbeck Abbey, accessible throughout August, are complemented by a focus on Rem Koolhaas’s “Corridor” in the estate’s Harley Gallery, which contextualises the vast underground ballroom and labyrinthine tunnels built by the fifth Duke. In Norfolk, the Marquess of Cholmondeley’s Palladian Houghton Hall is transformed by James Turrell’s LightScape.
The contents of such great houses, however, also star in the London season’s fairs and salerooms. The descendants of the immensely wealthy Englishmen who embarked on the journey to Italy in pursuit of art and antiquities — among other pleasures — have long been more sellers than buyers. Although the Grand Tour had its roots in the 17th century (and was by no means exclusively British or male) it was essentially an 18th- century phenomenon. Italy was “the great object of travelling”, according to Dr Johnson, for “all our religion, all our arts, almost all that sets us above savages, has come from the shores of the Mediterranean”. The young men who attached themselves to this virtual “academy” came — in theory at least — to steep themselves in the idyllic landscapes of the Latin poets and to admire the great architecture and sculpture of Rome’s Classical past. They took home what antiquities they could find, as well as “Old Master” paintings and drawings, and mementoes in the form of portraits and detailed view paintings. ©Nicholas, 12th Lord Monson and his two brothers Pompeo Batoni’s ‘Portrait of John, 3rd Baron Monson of Burton’ (c1772-76)
Having one’s portrait painted in Italy was a part of the ritual, and the most admired portraitist in Rome was Pompeo Batoni. On July 8, Sotheby’s is offering a market rarity: a virtuoso full-length portrait of the 21-year-old John, third Baron Monson, commissioned during his travels of 1772-76 and now consigned to auction by his heirs (estimate £2m- £3m). Resplendent in a Van Dyck costume of grey and coral silks, the young aristocrat is portrayed with a loyal spaniel at his feet, the Temple of the Sibyl at Tivoli in the background and to his side the first-century statue, “Roma Triumphans”, set into Michelangelo’s Fontana della Dea Roma. It is the kind of swagger portrait that could stand comparison with the portraits of the grandest ancestors, and of a type that was particularly admired by the great American plutocratic collectors of the early 20th century. There has been a revival in interest in such portraits, with Gainsborough’s effervescent portrait, of Miss Read, from the collection of the Viscount Cowdray fetching a record £6.5m at Christie’s in 2011. Albums of drawings and prints were also popular acquisitions. On July 8, Bonhams offers a sheet from the well-documented album of 28 red chalk drawings by the Bolognese master Guercino, acquired by Horace Walpole’s friend John Chaloner Chute during his Italian travels in 1741-46 (£40,000- £60,000). As for the vedute, or view paintings, London is unusually awash with fine watery views of Venice, Naples and Florence. During his two sojourns in Italy, Henry Howard, the fourth Earl of Carlisle, bought or commissioned more than 40 views of Venice to ornament Castle Howard. One of them, “Venice, A View of the Grand Canal Looking South from the Palazzo Foscari”, painted by the young and precocious Bernardo Bellotto (estimate £2.5m-£3.5m), is one of a £10m group of works consigned to Sotheby’s from the palatial Castle Howard this summer. The fourth Earl also had a penchant for antiquities and semi-precious hardstones, and the sale includes a unique pair of 17th-century Roman pietre dure cabinets (£800,000- £1.2m) as well as a monumental quartz diorite vase from first-century BC Roman Egypt, acquired by the fifth Earl (£400,000-£600,000). The world’s new rich in Russia and Asia have already made their presence felt in the markets for such treasures.
©Bridgeman Art Library Thomas Patch’s ‘A Caricature Group in Florence’ (c1760) Grand Tour works of art also feature among the highlights of Masterpiece (until July 1) and the 40 or so exhibitions of London Art Week (July 3-10). Robilant + Voena, for instance, presents one of Antonio Joli’s panoramic views of Naples of around 1740 at Masterpiece (£1.2m), while, during London Art Week, Moretti offers Thomas Patch’s “A View of the River Arno with the Ponte alle Grazie, Florence” (in the region of €550,000). To meet the inexhaustible demand for antiquities in the 18th and 19th centuries, sculptors of the time often “finished” fragmentary antique finds, made facsimiles or cast reductions of the most celebrated models, as well as those recently unearthed in Pompeii and Herculaneum. Trinity Fine Art show a version of “Two Dogs Bringing Down a Stag” from the Museo Pio-Clemente in the Vatican while Coll & Cortés present an imposing oversized marble bust of the Lucius Verus, once at Mentmore Towers in Buckinghamshire. Benjamin Proust and Daniel Katz present sculpture and vases from Giacomo Zoffoli’s well-patronised foundry in Rome. At Masterpiece, Tomasso Brothers offer a monumental cast of an antique cinerary urn attributed to Francesco Righetti (in the region of £500,000).
©Masterpiece Marble table top by Giacomo Raffaelli (1831) at Tomasso Brothers Fine Art For foreign artists, architects and sculptors, Italy was a kind of open-air studio, attracting those who felt the need to immerse themselves in the past before creating the art of the present. Of the British artists, none was more original than the Welshman Thomas Jones, whose revolutionary plein-air oil studies predate those of his continental colleagues. One is displayed as part of a group of works by British artists who travelled to Italy in the 1780s and 80s shown by Lowell Libson at Masterpiece (£200,000). Tomasso Brothers also present a fascinating and minutely documented specimen marble table, acquired in 1831 by John Kennedy-Erskine from Giacomo Raffaelli, the first great master of micromosaic in Rome (about £250,000). Grand Tour antiquities dot Masterpiece. Rupert Wace, however, also shows a marble cinerary urn of the first century that is a rare example of an import from Rome into Roman Britain, recovered by an antiquarian in Sussex in 1703 (£150,000). As a reflection of wealth, status and taste, collecting — like the Grand Tour — continues to evolve.
Masterpiece London, until July 1, masterpiecefair.com; London Art Week, July 3- 10, londonartweek.co.uk; Pablo Bronstein at Chatsworth, July 4-September 20, thegrandtour.uk.com