Stourhead Illustrated list of pictures and sculpture The Little Dining Room The Picture Gallery A Family Collection Like all significant collections of pictures and sculpture in country houses, those at Stourhead have two main elements: the family portraits accumulated over a number of generations, and the paintings systematically commissioned and/or acquired by deliberate collectors. In the case of the Hoares of Stourhead there were really just two of these: Henry II Hoare, known as ‘The Magnificent’ (1705–85), and his grandson, Sir Richard Colt Hoare, 2nd Bt (1758–1838). The collection was, however, affected by The character of Henry II Hoare’s collection II had a sky-lit picture gallery, but even this three other things: most crucially, by the emerges best from the detailing of it by does not seem to have been reserved either Heirlooms sales of 1883, in which what were Horace Walpole, after a visit made in July for the best pictures, or for a particular type then thought to be the most valuable 1762. It was chiefly composed of pictures by of picture. The large Dughets (Nos 43, 44), pictures were put up for auction. These Italian artists, or painted in Italy, leavened by and the great Maratta were acquired directly included Rembrandt’s nocturnal Flight into a number of landscapes by John Wootton from Italy via an agent, but – apart from the Egypt (now National Gallery of Ireland, (who had also painted the horse in the great paintings that he commissioned – Henry II Dublin), Fra Bartolomeo’s The Virgin and St equestrian portrait of Henry II as a young seems to have made most of his acquisitions Joseph adoring the Christ Child (now National man, then as now dominating the Hall), and through London dealers and salerooms. Gallery, London), Poussin’s Rape of the by pastels by Hoare of Bath (who was no Evidently of equal importance to his Sabines (now Metropolitan Museum of Art, relation, although his daughter later married pictures for Henry II was his sculpture, and it New York), and Carlo Dolci’s Salome (now into the family). Amongst the original likewise elicited the most detailed Glasgow Art Gallery). Then there was the fire pictures listed by Walpole that are still in the consideration from Walpole. Most of this that gutted the house in 1902. The paintings collection are: the two Sebastiano Riccis was – and still is – in structures in the were saved, but, when the Saloon was rebuilt (Nos 356, 191 – though the latter has since grounds, notably Rysbrack’s great Hercules, it was reduced in size, so the large paintings turned out to be a copy), Maratta’s Flight into its body reputedly an amalgam of ‘the best- that had occupied its stucco frames were Egypt (No.25), the pair of Imperialis (Nos 41, formed parts of noted Boxers’. But indoors either banished to the upper landing of the 42), and The Choice of Hercules by Nicolas there was a less than life-size marble Young Staircase or given to the newly created Poussin (No.21). Henry II’s most significant Bacchus, by contrast ‘composed by Rysbrack Victoria Art Gallery in Bath. Though all but acquisitions subsequent to Walpole’s visit from different antiques’ (now in the one were copies, mostly of great Seicento are something rather singular for a British Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon) and (though paintings, they gave the collection part of its collection: the Lagrenées (Nos 28, 29, 174, unmentioned by Walpole) Rysbrack’s character (two of them can now be seen in 307, 310, 311, 479). terracotta modelli, both in the round (for the the Guildhall in Bath). Finally, to fill some of The paintings were distributed throughout Hercules) and in relief (now over the the gaps left by the Heirlooms sales, Sir the ground-floor rooms of the house, Staircase), as well as busts: Milton Young, Henry Hoare, 6th Bt (1865–1947) and his wife unsystematically – apart from the seven Milton Old and Blind and Alfred the Great. Alda, who gave Stourhead and its contents large copies and one original, Sebastian Henry II also acquired numerous statues, to the National Trust in 1946, brought with Bourdon’s Judgement of Midas (one of those statuettes, and busts, in lead and Plaster. from them a number of pictures from the seat of given to the Victoria Art Gallery, but present John Cheere, ‘the man at Hyde Park Corner’. their line of the family, Wavendon, in whereabouts unknown), in the Saloon. In Sir Richard Colt Hoare – generally known Buckinghamshire. what was advanced taste for the time, Henry as Colt Hoare – was a collector in a very 1 different mould. He acquired pictures more acquisition in Italy, ten of the dozen drawings eclectically, but he arranged them more by Canaletto for the set of engravings of the systematically. He set out of the principles Ceremonies of the Doge, around a portrait of governing the allocation of certain types of Doge Pietro Landi over the chimneypiece of picture to particular rooms, in his description the Library – all, sadly, were dispersed in the of Stourhead in The History of Modern Heirlooms sales, though four are now in the Wiltshire: The Hundred of Mere (1822). Colt Print Room of the British Museum. The Hoare also differed from Henry II in his substitute for this Venetian group made by evident desire to encourage a native school Sir Henry and Alda, Lady Hoare, which they of painting, by giving commissions to British had brought from Wavendon, was probably artists for ‘fancy’ paintings, rather than just their most significant introduction to for portraits or landscapes (an approach Stourhead – and one not inappropriate to a shared by the 3rd Earl of Egremont at family whose wealth was built on banking: Petworth House [NT]. He also encouraged the modello (imported into England early in artists such as Ducros – and, above all, the 18th century) by Pierre Legros for his J.M.W. Turner – to paint watercolours on a large marble relief in the chapel of the Monte scale, and with an ambition, to rival oils (very di Pietà in Rome of Tobit placing money on sadly, Turner’s ten great watercolours of deposit with Gabael. Otherwise, their taste Salisbury Cathedral were amongst the losses seems particularly to have been for in the 1883 Heirlooms sales). architectural capriccios (Nos 3, 196, 202), Unlike Henry II, Colt Hoare himself made complementing the Harding pastiches of the Grand Tour to Italy, on two separate Panini introduced as overmantels by Henry II journeys, in 1785–87 and 1788–91, visiting (Nos 211, 318, 612). In addition – possibly places off the beaten track, such as Elba and fostered by some particular rapport between the further stretches of the Appian Way. He artist and patron – the artist and novelist St kept, and partially published, journals of his George Hare not only painted portraits of Sir travels, and both made sketches of views and Henry, Lady Hoare, and their only son, whose sites himself, and took other artists along death in the First World War was to lead to with him to do so: above all, Carlo Labruzzi, their donation of Stourhead to the National but also Don ‘Tito’ Lusieri, and the Hackert Trust (Nos 160, 161, 139, 459, 460), but also a brothers. Most of his own sketches are series of subject pictures, some of whose preserved in albums in the Library in themes have now come to seem curiously Stourhead, and a few drawings and equivocal – notably Miserere Domini (No.457) watercolours by the other artists are in the and The Gilded Cage (No.458). house, but Labruzzi’s sadly all went in the In the early years of its ownership of Heirlooms sales, and only a couple have been Stourhead, the National Trust thinned the recovered (Nos 582, 589). He also employed hangs of pictures - especially in the Picture the Saxon pioneer of the art, J.C. Gallery – and lent a number of them to other Seydelmann, and his English disciple, John properties – such as Mompesson House, James Rouby, to make large sepia wash Salisbury – without picture collections of copies of heads and other details in their own. More recently, it has clawed back celebrated Old Masters – to which two whole these pictures, and bought others down rooms at Stourhead were given over. from attic stores, to recreate – so far as is Colt Hoare was criticised by artists in possible, given the losses in 1883, and the Rome for only commissioning landscape subsequent introductions by Sir Henry and paintings, and no sculpture, but he did Alda, Lady Hoare – the hangs of the house in acquire major history-pictures in oils from its heyday: at the time of Colt Hoare’s death earlier periods – notably Cigoli’s great in 1838. The Saloon, being the one room that altarpiece of The Adoration of the Magi (No.18) was not rebuilt as it had been before the fire from a destroyed church in Florence. in 1902, is largely given over to the After he got back home, he decided to add introductions and commissions of Sir Henry a semi-detached (prophetically, in case of the and Lady Hoare. Some hangs still remain to main block of the house catching fire) Library be recreated: above all, that of the large (1792), and then a semi-detached Picture sepia drawings by Seydelmann and Rouby in Gallery (completed 1802) – on a much the Italian Room. greater scale than Henry IIs, but regrettably not top-lit – to Stourhead. Having done so, Alastair Laing he proceeded to rearrange the pictures Curator of Pictures and Sculpture systematically (as set out in the quotations before each room in this list).