Category: Suffolk

As I’m not observant, I hadn’t realised at the time that this painting at Ickworth House was by William Hogarth (1697-1764) who must rank as one of the most influential British artists. The work was commissioned by John, Lord Hervey, and also has the title of ‘The Holland House Group’ which seems to me to be a more grown-up sounding name than ‘the Hervey Conversation Piece’. This secondary title points towards the significant presence of Henry and Stephen Fox, whose family later held the title Baron Holland and resided at Holland House. I had to look it up, but the ‘conversation piece’ style of artwork was a thing in the eighteenth century, a way of the middle classes to show off their status.

It was painted between 1738 and 1740, with this being time for another table…

I love a political artwork (I don’t get out much) as they’re statements of intent and political alliances rather than anything else. Hervey had reached the giddy heights of Vice-Chamberlain to Royal Household which was a rather more powerful role than it is today. I note that because I would bet that the majority of people don’t know that Samantha Dixon currently holds the role, although I sometimes fear that the majority of people don’t know who the Home Secretary is.

There is some background information here, which is that John Hervey and Stephen Fox were in a relationship, although initially John has pursued Henry Fox until he rejected the advances and he went for his older brother instead. For extra excitement, Winnington had an affair, likely more than one, and managed to get himself involved in a duel.

The artwork has never left the property and was owned by the Hervey family until 1956 when it was accepted by HM Treasury in lieu of death duties and then given to the National Trust. There’s also a copy of the artwork at Redlynch Park in Wiltshire, which was the country seat of the Fox family.

This painting at Ickworth House shows the meeting of the Hon. Mrs Constantine Phipps being led to greet her brother, Captain the Hon Augustus Hervey, later 3rd Earl of Bristol. The artwork was commissioned in 1750 by the matriarch Mary, Lady Hervey, but it was a rather more complex affair than she might have first intended. The six individuals posed, or whatever it is people do when sitting for a painting, in Paris in October 1750 and much of the whole thing was a show of her social status. Anyway, there’s more about Mary at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Hervey and more about Augustus at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustus_Hervey,_3rd_Earl_of_Bristol.

The artist was Hubert-François Bourguignon (1699-1773), known as Gravelot, who was something of an active participant in London’s burgeoning art scene, frequenting Slaughter’s Coffee House and teaching at the St. Martin’s Lane Academy, an important precursor to the Royal Academy, alongside figures like William Hogarth and Francis Hayman. His pupils included the young Thomas Gainsborough, who reportedly even painted backgrounds for Gravelot in the mid-1740s. In the Ickworth painting, commissioned five years after his return to Paris, Gravelot appears to have been the primary architect and instigator of the whole arrangement. He is credited with painting the bodies of the figures and, significantly, the heads of Mary, Lady Hervey, and the Fitzgerald couple.

But then we move onto Jean-Étienne Liotard (1702–1789), a portrait painter born in Geneva to French Huguenot parents. For the Ickworth commission, Liotard was specifically engaged to paint the heads of the Honourable Mrs Constantine Phipps and her husband. But then it seems that Lady Hervey became a bit impatient with the speed of everything and she commissioned Francis Hayman (1708-1776) to finish everything off, although his exact contribution is unclear so there are some figures that have likely been painted by three different people.

Which gives us (as everyone loves a handy table):

What a faff. This painting was one of the relatively few at Ickworth House that just stayed at the property, perhaps because no-one else would want it, rather than being one that the National Trust had to work out how to reacquire later on. The whole thing feels like the eighteenth century equivalent of a modern-day photo of a family on a first class flight somewhere cultural, showing happy families, a slight air of superiority and a hint of cultural aspirations. Well, something rather more than a hint. The painting is all very country house aristocracy, although to be fair, that’s exactly what it is and I’m rather pleased (as much as anyone can be in the circumstances) that the painting has continued to be kept at the house.

I am that dull that I not only have a favourite encyclopaedia, I have a favourite edition….. So, I’m always surprised and delighted to see them in the wild so to speak. Although the National Trust has split this collection at Ickworth House between two rooms which I managed not to be too traumatised about, although I had a strong urge for Liam to put them all together in one place. I don’t have a physical copy of the book at the moment, but there is a free version on-line and here’s just one random section from the complete set of books that Project Gutenburg has transcribed. I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned, but I had some e-mail conversations with Michael Hart, the founder of Project Gutenberg, in what must have been around 1995. Unfortunately, my e-mail archive doesn’t go back that far to read what riveting things I asked him about….. Anyway, I appear to have digressed once again.

The library at Ickworth House, the largest of the property’s grand rooms and it is located adjoining the dining room. The name feels slightly misleading, as there are books all over the house and this room doesn’t have that many of them. It’s located at the heart of the Rotunda and is a large and expansive space that was also used as a ballroom. The fireplace was brought from Italy and installed by John Field, all part of the Grand Tour influence.

A lot of the books were rebound by Theodora, Lady Bristol, which has rather hidden their true beauty. I don’t like this uniformity, it’s a shame that the original bindings were lost. That’s what happens when books are seen as aesthetic things rather than beautiful in their own damaged right.

These great pillars are giant scagliola columns which cost £332 back when the room was laid out in the 1820s. It’s fair to say, that was a lot of money, somewhere around £35,000 in today’s money. At the same time, the bookshelves were installed, designed by the royal furniture makers Banting, France & Co who also supplied some of the other furniture in the room.

Anyway, onto one of my judgemental comments…. This room was significant in 2015 when the National Trust, under the leadership of Helen Ghosh, made a decision that they wanted people to linger in the room longer and to do that they would take the furniture out and put in bean bags. The mind process is just ridiculous, it’s easy to get people to linger in a room but it’s just as illogical to turn it into a waiting room as it is to fill it with clutter and force visitors to spend longer there as they can’t get around. At the time, the former head curator at the National Trust called the whole thing “misguided” and he seems right to me. After much hilarity from some observers, the National Trust scrapped the new vision after realising it was a bloody stupid one.

A lot of the blame appears to have been dumped by the National Trust onto Sue Borges, and there’s a photo of the bean bag project at Art History News. Borges claimed none of the 9,500 visitors who had gone through that weekend had criticised the arrangement, but the room guides apparently had a different take according to that article and it’s odd that out of such a large audience no-one had a differing view. Normally the Daily Telegraph have an entirely different view on the National Trust to me, as I’ve apparently gone a bit woke, but I’m pleased that wiser heads prevailed. Right, that’s that complaint out of the way and I very much like that they’re taken the historic items they bought back out of storage and restored them to the room.

This is the decadent dining room at Ickworth House, one of the major state rooms in the property which was used for grand dining and located next to the library.

The room is located on the ground floor of the imposing Rotunda and occupies a central position in the property. The whole Rotunda arrangement was initially conceived by its progenitor, Frederick Hervey, the Earl Bishop, as a magnificent gallery, a ‘kunsthaus’ designed primarily to showcase the vast collection of art and antiquities he amassed during his extensive European travels. However, much of this collection was confiscated by Napoleonic troops which was a bit sub-optimal for the whole arrangement. His son, Frederick William, the 5th Earl and later 1st Marquess, inherited the unfinished project and he decided to mostly live in the East Wing, turning this room into one used only for formal entertaining to surprise and delight visitors.

Until 1910, the food was brought up from the East Wing kitchens which were located around 300 feet away, so meals turned up on trolleys rather colder than ideal, so a new kitchen was built underneath this room when the property was reworked and a dumb waiter installed to link them. The family were still living in the East Wing, so these kitchens remained the day to day ones, meaning the new one was designed to just be a Finishing Kitchen used occasionally when these big formal entertaining dinners were needed.

This sculpture of William Pitt the Younger is located in the West Corridor at Ickworth House, standing next to the sculpture of the 2nd Earl of Liverpool. And, for anyone who remembers (or cares) from that blog post, this sculpture is on a red porphyry scagliola column with a white marble base. Very technical of me…. I don’t much need to write about William Pitt the Younger as he’s hardly an anonymous person.

Joseph Nollekens (1737-1823) was one of the best known British sculptors during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He was born in London to Flemish immigrant parents (his father was a painter) and he trained under the sculptor Peter Scheemakers the Younger and later spent several years in Rome, where he studied classical sculpture and worked for the renowned antiquarian Gavin Hamilton.

Incidentally, the West Corridor was only completed in 1879 and the Pompeian Room lies at the end of the corridor. The Edwardians painted out all the Victorian artwork on the walls, but much was put back again in 1995.

This sculpture of the 2nd Earl of Liverpool is located in the West Corridor of Ickworth House and it was created by the sculptor B.F. Hardenburg in 1816 who had a studio was located near that of the Rome-trained sculptor Sir Richard Westmacott. I’m not an expert in rock, but apparently:

“The bust is mounted on a white marble socle (a low pedestal) which then sits on a more substantial porphyry scagliola column. Scagliola is a technique for producing imitation marble, and porphyry is a type of hard, purplish-red rock often associated with royalty and antiquity, suggesting the Earl’s high status”

I’m not sure I’ll remember some of the more complex words in that sentence, something akin to how I struggle to remember the Polish words I try to learn, but there we go.

Robert Banks Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool (1770-1828), has the connection to the property that he was the brother-in-law of the 1st Marquess as he married Louisa Jenkinson, Countess of Liverpool (nee Hervey). And he was also quite good at politics as he became Prime Minister between 1812 and 1827 which is a lengthy spell surpassed only by Sir Robert Walpole and William Pitt the Younger meaning no-one following him has lasted longer in the role. Incidentally, he was the first Prime Minister to wear trousers rather than breeches, so there’s a fun fact. OK, I accept ‘fun fact’ is a bit relative here…. Incidentally, there’s some irony to me that he is known for this fashion statement, but in the sculpture at Ickworth they’ve dressed him up as a Roman wearing a toga.

The Pompeian Room at Ickworth House was completed in 1879 and this wasn’t in the original design conceived by the Earl-Bishop, even though he was inspired by Italian elements during his Grand Tour. Instead, it was the concept of Frederick William John Hervey, the 3rd Marquess of Bristol (1834-1907), who inherited the estate and title long after the initial Neoclassical vision had been established. In 1879, the 3rd Marquess engaged the architect Francis Cranmer Penrose (F.C. Penrose) to undertake works aimed at improving the internal layout of Ickworth. Penrose, a notable and quite decadent figure who held the prestigious position of Surveyor of St Paul’s Cathedral, was specifically tasked with creating both the Pompeian Room and its counterpart, the Smoking Room, within the projecting bays of the linking corridors to the main house.

While Penrose handled the architectural modifications, the room’s defining characteristic – its elaborate decoration – was entrusted to John Diblee Crace (J.D. Crace) of the renowned Crace decorating firm. J.D. Crace was a leading figure in 19th-century interior decoration, particularly skilled in historical revival styles, making him something of an apt choice for realising a Pompeian scheme. Despite the name of the room, they copied the design from Roman wall paintings found at the Villa Negroni in Rome, rather than using anything that had been found in Pompeii.

Much of the Earl-Bishop’s collections of Italian archaeological treasures were seized by Napoleon, which rather limited his initial intention to create a substantial art gallery and museum at the house. That meant that when Hervey came along decades later, he had to use imitation designs when he built this room. The Victorians, or at least the Victorians who owned large houses, liked to have rooms for specific reasons, such as the smoking room that was built at the same time. This room was used for rather advanced leisure gatherings, it must have all been quite sophisticated and intellectual in here…..

Liam noticed this when we were at Ickworth House and I rather liked it. It sounds like some of the challenge events I go to when I mention that I’m hungry….