Skip to main content
Read page text
page 36
36  ANGELICA KAUFFMAN AT ATTINGHAM PARK 7 FIG 7 Henrietta, Lady Bruce, 1793, Angelica Kauffman, oil on canvas, 129.5 x 101.5cm, private collection Photo: courtesy Colnaghi, London FIG 8 Lord Bruce, later 1st Marquess of Ailesbury, 1795, Angelica Kauffman, oil on canvas, 129.5 x 101.5cm, private collection Photo: courtesy Colnaghi, London 8 may be insured for the value of 150 pounds. of which I dare say his Lordship will not disaprove [sic] […] Lord Berwick’s picture it being rader [sic] large is rold [sic] I hope care will be taken at the costum [sic] house, if it should be opened to be wished and not take of [sic] the paper which is laid betwin [sic] without proper precaution in case it should be fiercd [sic - forced?] on the paint about this precaution I have given proper instruction in a letter written to his lordship.35 Berwick’s paintings were lucky to make it to England without damage during this time of unrest. A newly discovered bill and receipt in the Attingham archive, dated March 1796 (paid in 1797), from William Saunders (1783–1810), a carver, gilder and frame maker with premises at 10 Great Castle Street in Marylebone, lists ‘a whole length frame sent to exhibition for a paint[ing] by Angelica Kauffman – £7 5s’.36 The 1796 frame by Saunders is probably the one that the painting sits in today. The two history paintings are framed as a pair, with the portrait of Lord Berwick framed in a complementary but simpler design (Fig. 3). The frames are of Maratta type, with the two history pictures enriched in the flats by wreaths of bay or laurel returning at beribboned centres. In 1805, Berwick commissioned the architect John Nash to build a top-lit picture gallery at Attingham for the display of his Old Masters and modern pictures.37 The gallery was completed in 1807. The paintings were displayed against walls of ‘dark red’.38 They were lit both by daylight and by the ‘elegant brass-frame Lustre’ with six two-burner lamps and a ‘five-tier fountain of rich cut spangle and icicle drops […] with pine-apple top ornament’, which hung in the centre of the room until the mid 1800s.39 The Shrewsbury carver and gilder Thomas Donaldson, who in 1811 would supply a pair of Regency console tables for the Picture Gallery, in 1807 provided picture hooks for the new room.40 The previous year he had done the same in the Drawing Room, which was then painted a pale salmon pink. In 1808 Katherine Plymley described seeing one of the Kauffmans in the Drawing Room: ‘Besides the paintings in the gallery, there is a very large and pleasing picture by Angelica Kauffman.’ 41 This was probably one of the two history paintings. By 1843 both were certainly in the Drawing Room and Berwick’s portrait hung in the Picture Gallery.42 In 1810, Lord Berwick admitted to his younger brother William, who was at the time envoy plenipotentiary to the Sardinian court and would later succeed him in the peerage, that he had not ‘resolution to abstain from Building and Picture buying’.43 Berwick had greatly benefited from the sales that followed the French Revolution, buying Old Masters from the collection of Louis Philippe, duc d’Orléans (also known as Philippe Egalité). In December 1823, William, having moved from Turin to Naples, wrote about his elder brother’s financial troubles: In my opinion he ought immediately to place himself in Trustees’ hands and go to some cheap place abroad and live upon a very small income. If he had done this 7 or 8 years ago he would now have been a happy and rich man comparatively.44 Two years later, Berwick was forced to sell some of his pictures in order to raise funds to satisfy his creditors.45 The final catastrophe came in 1827, when a 16-day sale at Attingham took place. The two Kauffman history paintings
page 37
ANGELICA KAUFFMAN AT ATTINGHAM PARK  37 came up for sale on the morning of 6 August 1827. The flamboyant auctioneer Thomas Robins described Bacchus and Ariadne (lot 53) and Euphrosyne (lot 54) in the sale catalogue as follows: ‘These very elegant Pictures are of the highest excellence of this greatly admired Artist’s works, and may justly be adduced as matchless examples.’46 Neither picture was sold, despite interest from Sir John Soane, who had four copies of the catalogue and sent his representative William Watson to the sale.47 The fate of the paintings hung in the balance for a second time when they featured in the 1829 Attingham sale.48 Thankfully, the pictures never left the house. Their place at Attingham was eventually secured by Berwick’s brother William, who wrote from Naples on 2 July 1829: ‘I wish to buy and keep the two Angelica Kauffmans, the only ones not my own in the great Drawing Room, if they can be had in the proportion of forty or fifty Pounds each by selling my own as by the subjoined list.’49 Kauffman’s portrait of Lord Berwick, along with other family portraits, did not feature in any of the sales. Berwick moved to Italy before the 1827 sale, probably to distance himself from his creditors, while William leased Attingham.50 On Berwick’s death in 1832, the surviving paintings there were catalogued and valued. In the previously unstudied ‘Memorandum of Pictures at Attingham Hall’, dated 10 December 1833, which excluded portraits, the pair of Kauffman history paintings is valued at £200.51 Unfortunately, the list does not give any indication as to where the pictures were hung. Another recently discovered list of 1843, drawn up after William, third Lord Berwick’s own death, contains annotations that indicate how the pictures were distributed once he had fully returned to England in 1833.52 Kauffman’s two history paintings hung together in the Drawing Room. Berwick’s portrait was in the Picture Gallery, but had been moved to the Dining Room by 1847.53 It is shown hanging on the north wall there in a watercolour by Lady Hester Leeke of around 1847,54 alongside paintings of his aunt Maria, Lady Broughton-Delves, by Reynolds (c. 1765–69), of his brother William, attributed to George Sanders (c. 1800), and of his sister Henrietta by Sir Thomas Lawrence (c. 1809–30).55 By 1949, two years after the eighth Lord Berwick bequeathed Attingham and its collection to the National Trust, the three paintings by Kauffman were hanging together in the Drawing Room, where they remain to this day. Lord Berwick is now immortalised on canvas between two of Angelica Kauffman’s best history paintings. After the crash of 1827, the Attingham collection was built up again by William, third Lord Berwick, whose diplomatic skills were praised by Byron.56 He not only took steps to save as much of his brother’s legacy as he could, but also introduced his own fine Italian furniture in order to fill the gaps in the house left by the disastrous sales. As a result, Attingham is today one of the National Trust’s most Italianate houses. In the Drawing Room, the three Kauffmans are now very much at home alongside the third Lord Berwick’s Italian furniture and the eighth Lord Berwick’s version of Canova’s Venus Italica. Saraid Jones is the Research and Interpretation Officer at Attingham Park, Shropshire. 9 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The author would like to thank the following people for their advice and support: Bettina Baumgärtel, Wolf Burchard, John Chu, Alec Cobbe, David Gelber, Anne Heritage, Sarah Kay, Alastair Laing, Ian Purchase, Ivar Rømo, Christopher Rowell, Wendy Wassyng Roworth, David Taylor and Gareth Williams. 1. Wendy Wassying Roworth (ed.), Angelica Kauffman: A Continental Artist in Georgian England, London, 1992. This work is the catalogue for the 1992 exhibition of Kauffman’s work in Brighton. For the 1998 Düsseldorf retrospective exhibition see Bettina Baumgärtel, Angelika Kauffmann, exh. cat., Düsseldorf, Munich & Bregenz, 1998–99. For the exhibition in Bregenz commemorating the 200th anniversary of the artist’s death, see Tobias G. Natter (ed.), Angelica Kauffman: A Woman of Immense Talent, Ostfildern, 2007. See also the Angelika Kauffmann Research Project website [http://www. angelica-kauffman.com] for Bettina Baumgärtel’s continuing work on the Catalogue Raisonné and a select bibliography. Other recent works include: Angela Rosenthal, Angelica Kauffman: Art and Sensibility, New Haven, 2006; Angelica Goodden, Miss Angel: The Art and World of Angelica Kauffman, London, 2006; and Caroline Chapman, Eighteenth-Century Women FIG 9 Bacchus Discovering Ariadne at Naxos, 1764, Angelica Kauffman, oil on canvas, 166 x 125cm, Landesmuseum, Bregenz Photo: Amt der Landeshauptstadt, Kultur, Bregenz, Austria FIG 10 (overleaf) Ariadne Abandoned by Theseus, 1774, Angelica Kauffman, oil on canvas, 63.8 x 90.9cm, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston Artists, London, 2017. 2. J.G. Herder wrote to his wife Caroline, from Rome on 28 March 1789, describing Kauffman as ‘vielleicht die kultivierteste Frau in Europa’. Karl-Heinz Hahn (ed.), Johann Gottfried Herder, Gesamtausgabe 1763–1803, Weimar, 1981, vol. 6; Angelika Kauffmann Research Project website [Accessed 27 February 2018: http://www.angelicakauffman.com]. 3. For general histories of Attingham Park, see Belinda Cousens, Attingham Park, London, 2008; John Cornforth & St John Gore, Attingham Park, London, no date; Christopher Hussey, English Country Houses: MidGeorgian, London, 1956. 4. Shropshire Archives, Katherine Plymley MSS, Diary 27 (25 May 1794–14 July 1794). Because of the nature of the diary, it is impossible to date the entry precisely. Longnor Hall is the neighbouring estate to Attingham. 5. For the Sultana Room roundels see NT 609126–8 and for the Boudoir roundels see NT 609129 and NT 609135. The Drawing Room roundels were never completed. Some of Kauffman’s work at Attingham, as at other houses, is after work by her husband, Antonio Zucchi (1726–1795). See also Roworth, op. cit., p. 124. 6. See NT 609437 for the Drawing Room design and NT 609439 for the Boudoir design. Some of the chimneypieces were installed in the 1790s, but Devall had been employed by Berwick’s father in 1783. See also Roworth, op. cit., p. 122. 7. Mechanical painting is an aquatint transfer touched up by hand and varnished to look like an oil painting. See Goodden, op. cit., pp. 168–69; Roworth, op. cit., p. 160; and Sally Baggott, Matthew Boulton: Enterprising Industrialist of the Enlightenment, Abingdon, 2016, p. 114. 8. The Ipswich Journal reported on 9 April 1791 that ‘Thomas Noel Hill, Lord Berwick, of Jesus college [was] on Tuesday admitted Honorary Master of Arts.’ 9. For an illustration of a bear leader see British Museum drawing 1946,0713.98. Edward Clarke’s collection of antiquities is held at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. 10. William Otter, The Life and Remains of Edward Daniel Clarke, Professor of Mineralogy in the University of Cambridge, vol. 1, London, 1825, pp. 131–32. Otter quotes from Clarke’s letter to his mother, 5 December 1792. 11. Angelika Kauffmann Research Project website [accessed 27 February 2018: http://www.angelicakauffman.com/en/vita/]. 12. The main version of this picture, also signed and dated 1787, and painted for the Grand Duke of Tuscany, is in the Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. 13. The information about Kauffman’s paintings and clients in the 1780s and 1790s can be found in Victoria

Page Text

View plaintext

ANGELICA KAUFFMAN AT ATTINGHAM PARK  37

came up for sale on the morning of 6 August 1827. The flamboyant auctioneer Thomas Robins described Bacchus and Ariadne (lot 53) and Euphrosyne (lot 54) in the sale catalogue as follows: ‘These very elegant Pictures are of the highest excellence of this greatly admired Artist’s works, and may justly be adduced as matchless examples.’46 Neither picture was sold, despite interest from Sir John Soane, who had four copies of the catalogue and sent his representative William Watson to the sale.47

The fate of the paintings hung in the balance for a second time when they featured in the 1829 Attingham sale.48 Thankfully, the pictures never left the house. Their place at Attingham was eventually secured by Berwick’s brother William, who wrote from Naples on 2 July 1829: ‘I wish to buy and keep the two Angelica Kauffmans, the only ones not my own in the great Drawing Room, if they can be had in the proportion of forty or fifty Pounds each by selling my own as by the subjoined list.’49 Kauffman’s portrait of Lord Berwick, along with other family portraits, did not feature in any of the sales.

Berwick moved to Italy before the 1827 sale, probably to distance himself from his creditors, while William leased Attingham.50 On Berwick’s death in 1832, the surviving paintings there were catalogued and valued. In the previously unstudied ‘Memorandum of Pictures at Attingham Hall’, dated 10 December 1833, which excluded portraits, the pair of Kauffman history paintings is valued at £200.51 Unfortunately, the list does not give any indication as to where the pictures were hung.

Another recently discovered list of 1843, drawn up after William, third Lord Berwick’s own death, contains annotations that indicate how the pictures were distributed once he had fully returned to England in 1833.52 Kauffman’s two history paintings hung together in the Drawing Room. Berwick’s portrait was in the Picture Gallery, but had been moved to the Dining Room by 1847.53 It is shown hanging on the north wall there in a watercolour by Lady Hester Leeke of around 1847,54 alongside paintings of his aunt Maria, Lady Broughton-Delves, by Reynolds (c. 1765–69), of his brother William, attributed to George Sanders (c. 1800), and of his sister Henrietta by Sir Thomas Lawrence (c. 1809–30).55

By 1949, two years after the eighth Lord Berwick bequeathed Attingham and its collection to the National Trust, the three paintings by Kauffman were hanging together in the Drawing Room, where they remain to this day. Lord Berwick is now immortalised on canvas between two of Angelica Kauffman’s best history paintings. After the crash of 1827, the Attingham collection was built up again by William, third Lord Berwick, whose diplomatic skills were praised by Byron.56 He not only took steps to save as much of his brother’s legacy as he could, but also introduced his own fine Italian furniture in order to fill the gaps in the house left by the disastrous sales. As a result, Attingham is today one of the National Trust’s most Italianate houses. In the Drawing Room, the three Kauffmans are now very much at home alongside the third Lord Berwick’s Italian furniture and the eighth Lord Berwick’s version of Canova’s Venus Italica.

Saraid Jones is the Research and Interpretation Officer at Attingham Park, Shropshire.

9

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The author would like to thank the following people for their advice and support: Bettina Baumgärtel, Wolf Burchard, John Chu, Alec Cobbe, David Gelber, Anne Heritage, Sarah Kay, Alastair Laing, Ian Purchase, Ivar Rømo, Christopher Rowell, Wendy Wassyng Roworth, David Taylor and Gareth Williams. 1. Wendy Wassying Roworth (ed.), Angelica Kauffman: A Continental Artist in Georgian England, London, 1992. This work is the catalogue for the 1992 exhibition of Kauffman’s work in Brighton. For the 1998 Düsseldorf retrospective exhibition see Bettina Baumgärtel, Angelika Kauffmann, exh. cat., Düsseldorf, Munich & Bregenz, 1998–99. For the exhibition in Bregenz commemorating the 200th anniversary of the artist’s death, see Tobias G. Natter (ed.), Angelica Kauffman: A Woman of Immense Talent, Ostfildern, 2007. See also the Angelika Kauffmann Research Project website [http://www. angelica-kauffman.com] for Bettina Baumgärtel’s continuing work on the Catalogue Raisonné and a select bibliography. Other recent works include: Angela Rosenthal, Angelica Kauffman: Art and Sensibility, New Haven, 2006; Angelica Goodden, Miss Angel: The Art and World of Angelica Kauffman, London, 2006; and Caroline Chapman, Eighteenth-Century Women

FIG 9 Bacchus Discovering Ariadne at Naxos, 1764, Angelica Kauffman, oil on canvas, 166 x 125cm, Landesmuseum, Bregenz Photo: Amt der Landeshauptstadt, Kultur, Bregenz, Austria FIG 10 (overleaf) Ariadne Abandoned by Theseus, 1774, Angelica Kauffman, oil on canvas, 63.8 x 90.9cm, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Artists, London, 2017. 2. J.G. Herder wrote to his wife Caroline, from Rome on 28 March 1789, describing Kauffman as ‘vielleicht die kultivierteste Frau in Europa’. Karl-Heinz Hahn (ed.), Johann Gottfried Herder, Gesamtausgabe 1763–1803, Weimar, 1981, vol. 6; Angelika Kauffmann Research Project website [Accessed 27 February 2018: http://www.angelicakauffman.com]. 3. For general histories of Attingham Park, see Belinda Cousens, Attingham Park, London, 2008; John Cornforth & St John Gore, Attingham Park, London, no date; Christopher Hussey, English Country Houses: MidGeorgian, London, 1956. 4. Shropshire Archives, Katherine Plymley MSS, Diary 27 (25 May 1794–14 July 1794). Because of the nature of the diary, it is impossible to date the entry precisely. Longnor Hall is the neighbouring estate to Attingham. 5. For the Sultana Room roundels see NT 609126–8 and for the Boudoir roundels see NT 609129 and NT 609135. The Drawing Room roundels were never completed. Some of Kauffman’s work at Attingham, as at other houses, is after work by her husband, Antonio Zucchi (1726–1795). See also Roworth, op. cit., p. 124. 6. See NT 609437 for the Drawing Room design and NT 609439 for the Boudoir design. Some of the chimneypieces were installed in the 1790s, but Devall had been employed by

Berwick’s father in 1783. See also Roworth, op. cit., p. 122. 7. Mechanical painting is an aquatint transfer touched up by hand and varnished to look like an oil painting. See Goodden, op. cit., pp. 168–69; Roworth, op. cit., p. 160; and Sally Baggott, Matthew Boulton: Enterprising Industrialist of the Enlightenment, Abingdon, 2016, p. 114. 8. The Ipswich Journal reported on 9 April 1791 that ‘Thomas Noel Hill, Lord Berwick, of Jesus college [was] on Tuesday admitted Honorary Master of Arts.’ 9. For an illustration of a bear leader see British Museum drawing 1946,0713.98. Edward Clarke’s collection of antiquities is held at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. 10. William Otter, The Life and Remains of Edward Daniel Clarke, Professor of Mineralogy in the University of Cambridge, vol. 1, London, 1825, pp. 131–32. Otter quotes from Clarke’s letter to his mother, 5 December 1792. 11. Angelika Kauffmann Research Project website [accessed 27 February 2018: http://www.angelicakauffman.com/en/vita/]. 12. The main version of this picture, also signed and dated 1787, and painted for the Grand Duke of Tuscany, is in the Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. 13. The information about Kauffman’s paintings and clients in the 1780s and 1790s can be found in Victoria

read next page

My Bookmarks

Buy this Book
Skip to main content