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British Country House Contents Auctions
British and Irish country house contents auctions are usually held on site at the country house, and have been used to raise funds for their owners, usually before selling the house and estate. Such auctions include the sale of high quality antique paintings, furniture, objets d'art, tapestries, books, and other household items. History Country house contents auctions have been held formally since at least the mid 18th century, when dedicated auction houses were founded. The main auctioneers coordinating these sales today are Sotheby's, Christie's and Bonhams, with other auctions conducted by Lawrence's. A high quality auction catalogue is also published, giving details and photographs of the lots, including provenance, technical descriptions and estimated sale price ranges. These catalogues can also become collectables in their own right. The largest on-site contents auction to date, by proceeds value, is Viscount Leverhulme's Thornton Manor in the Wirral, raising over £9.5 m ...
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English Country House
image:Blenheim - Blenheim Palace - 20210417125239.jpg, 300px, Blenheim Palace - Oxfordshire An English country house is a large house or mansion in the English countryside. Such houses were often owned by individuals who also owned a Townhouse (Great Britain), town house. This allowed them to spend time in the country and in the city—hence, for these people, the term distinguished between town and country. However, the term also encompasses houses that were, and often still are, the full-time residence for the landed gentry who dominated rural Britain until the Reform Act 1832. Frequently, the formal business of the Historic counties of England, counties was transacted in these country houses, having functional antecedents in manor houses. With large numbers of indoor and outdoor staff, country houses were important as places of employment for many rural communities. In turn, until the Great Depression of British Agriculture, agricultural depressions of the 1870s, the est ...
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Earl Of Rosebery
Earl of Rosebery is a title in the Peerage of Scotland created in 1703 for Archibald Primrose, 1st Viscount of Rosebery, with remainder to his issue male and female successively. Its name comes from Roseberry Topping, a hill near Archibald's wife's estates in Yorkshire. The current earl is Harry Primrose, 8th Earl of Rosebery. History Archibald, the first Earl, was the fourth and youngest son of Sir Archibald Primrose, 1st Baronet, a Lord of Session under the title Lord Carrington, whose eldest son William was the father of James Primrose, who was created Viscount of Primrose in 1703. Archibald had already been created Lord Primrose and Dalmeny and Viscount of Rosebery in 1700, with remainder to his issue male and female successively, and in default thereof to the heirs of entail in the lands of Rosebery, and was made Lord Dalmeny and Viscount of Inverkeithing at the same time as he was given the earldom (and with similar remainders). These titles were also in the Peerage o ...
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Diana And Callisto
''Diana and Callisto'' is a painting completed between 1556 and 1559 by the Italian late Renaissance artist Titian. It portrays the moment in which the goddess Diana discovers that her maid Callisto has become pregnant by Jupiter. The painting was jointly purchased by the National Gallery and the Scottish National Gallery for £45 million in March 2012. Along with its companion painting '' Diana and Actaeon'' it is displayed on an alternating basis between London and Edinburgh. There is a later version by Titian and his workshop in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, in Vienna. History ''Diana and Callisto'' is part of a series of seven famous canvasses, the "poesies", depicting mythological scenes from Ovid's ''Metamorphoses'' painted for Philip II of Spain after Maximilian II, Holy Roman Emperor had declined Titian's offer to paint them for him. The work remained in the Spanish royal collection until 1704 when King Philip V gave it to the French ambassador. It was soon acquired ...
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Diana And Actaeon (Titian)
''Diana and Actaeon'' is a large painting by the Italian Renaissance painter Titian, finished in 1556–1559, and is considered amongst Titian's greatest works. It portrays the moment in which the hunter Actaeon comes across the goddess Diana (mythology), Diana and her nymphs as they are bathing. Diana is furious, and will turn Actaeon into a stag, who is then pursued and killed by his own hounds, a scene Titian later painted in his ''The Death of Actaeon'' (National Gallery). The story is typically located in woodland with very few structures aside from small works like walls and fountains. Titian adjusts this traditional setting by placing his characters in the arched stone ruins of a forest temple. Diana is the pale woman second from the right. She is wearing a crown with a crescent moon on it and is being covered by the dark skinned woman at the extreme right who may be her servant. The nymphs display a variety of reactions, and a variety of nude poses. In 2008–2009, the ...
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Mertoun House
Mertoun House is a country house situated by the River Tweed, east of St Boswells in the Scottish Borders. It is home to the Duke of Sutherland. The early 18th-century house is an A listed building, and was designed by Sir William Bruce. The gardens of the house are open to the public, and are included on the Inventory of Gardens and Designed Landscapes in Scotland, the national listing of significant gardens. History Mertoun was a property of the Halliburton family, who sold it to Sir William Scott of Harden in around 1680. Old Mertoun House, dated 1677, was already in existence at this time, as was the 16th-century dovecote, which is also category-A listed. In 1703 work on a new house was begun by Sir William's grandson, to designs by Sir Willam Bruce. The builder was the master mason Tobias Bauchop of Alloa. Around 1750 improvements were made to the house when Walter Scott of Mertoun married Lady Diana Hume Campbell, a daughter of the Earl of Marchmont. Their son Hugh was c ...
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Francis Egerton, 7th Duke Of Sutherland
Francis Ronald Egerton, 7th Duke of Sutherland (born 18 February 1940), known as Francis Ronald Egerton until 2000, is a British peer from the Egerton family. Family Sutherland is the son of Cyril Reginald Egerton, the grandson of Francis Egerton, 3rd Earl of Ellesmere. His mother was Mary, daughter of Sir Ronald Campbell. Sutherland was educated at Eton and Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester (Gloucestershire). Career On 21 July 2000, Sutherland succeeded his first cousin once-removed as 7th Duke of Sutherland and 6th Earl of Ellesmere. Most of Sutherland's wealth is in the form of the art collection put together by the first Duke's uncle, Francis Egerton, 3rd Duke of Bridgewater, which had been inherited by the Ellesmere line of the family. In 2008 he sold Titian's '' Diana and Actaeon'' to the National Gallery of Scotland and National Gallery in London for £50 million. He ranked 107th in the ''Sunday Times'' Rich List 2009, with an estimated wealth of £480m ...
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National Gallery, London
The National Gallery is an art museum in Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, in Central London, England. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of more than 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The current director of the National Gallery is Gabriele Finaldi. The National Gallery is an exempt charity, and a non-departmental public body of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Its collection belongs to the government on behalf of the British public, and entry to the main collection is free of charge. Unlike comparable museums in continental Europe, the National Gallery was not formed by nationalising an existing royal or princely art collection. It came into being when the British government bought 38 paintings from the heirs of John Julius Angerstein in 1824. After that initial purchase, the gallery was shaped mainly by its early directors, especially Charles Lock Eastlake, and by private donations, which now account for two-thirds o ...
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Madonna Of The Pinks
The ''Madonna of the Pinks'' (c. 1506 – 1507, ) is an early devotional painting usually attributed to Italian Renaissance master Raphael. It is painted in oils on highly toxic yew wood, a first for a Raphael, and now hangs in the National Gallery, London. Subject matter The painting depicts a youthful Virgin Mary playing with the Christ child and handing him carnations. (The Italian title, ''La Madonna dei garofani'' actually means The Madonna of the Carnation.) These flowers, whose botanical name is ''dianthus'' (Greek for ‘flower of God’), are a premonition of Christ's Passion – according to Christian legend the flower first appeared when the Virgin wept at the Crucifixion. The event takes place in a dimly lit domestic setting influenced by Netherlandish art. The composition is based closely on the '' Benois Madonna'' by Leonardo da Vinci, although the colour scheme of blues and greens that link the Virgin with the landscape is Raphael's own. Through the arched window ...
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Raphael
Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino (; March 28 or April 6, 1483April 6, 1520), now generally known in English as Raphael ( , ), was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. List of paintings by Raphael, His work is admired for its clarity of form, ease of composition, and visual achievement of the Platonism in the Renaissance, Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur. Together with Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, he forms the traditional trinity of great masters of that period. His father Giovanni Santi was court painter to the ruler of the small but highly cultured city of Urbino. He died when Raphael was eleven, and Raphael seems to have played a role in managing the family workshop from this point. He probably trained in the workshop of Pietro Perugino, and was described as a fully trained "master" by 1500. He worked in or for several cities in north Italy until in 1508 he moved to Rome at the invitation of Pope Julius II, to work on the Apostolic Palace at Vatican ...
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Alnwick Castle
Alnwick Castle () is a castle and country house in Alnwick in the English county of Northumberland. It is the seat of the Ralph Percy, 12th Duke of Northumberland, 12th Duke of Northumberland, built following the Norman Conquest and renovated and remodelled a number of times. It is a Grade I listed building now the home of Ralph Percy, 12th Duke of Northumberland and his family. In 2016, the castle received over 600,000 visitors per year when combined with adjacent attraction the Alnwick Garden. History Alnwick Castle guards a road crossing the River Aln. Ivo de Vesci, Baron of Alnwick, a nobleman from Vassy, Calvados in Normandy, erected the first parts of the castle in about 1096. Beatrix de Vesci, the daughter of Yves de Vescy, married the Constable of Chestershire and Knaresborough, Eustace fitz John. By his marriage to Beatrix de Vesci he gained the baronies of Malton, North Yorkshire, Malton and Alnwick. The castle was first mentioned in 1136 when it was captured by King ...
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Tate Britain
Tate Britain, known from 1897 to 1932 as the National Gallery of British Art and from 1932 to 2000 as the Tate Gallery, is an art museum on Millbank in the City of Westminster in London, England. It is part of the Tate network of galleries in England, with Tate Modern, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives. Founded by Sir Henry Tate, it houses a substantial collection of the art of the United Kingdom since Tudor times, and in particular has large holdings of the works of J. M. W. Turner, who bequeathed all his own collection to the nation. It is one of the largest museums in the country. In 2021 it ranked 50th on the list of most-visited art museums in the world. History The gallery is on Millbank, on the site of the former Millbank Prison. Construction, undertaken by Higgs and Hill, commenced in 1893, and the gallery opened on 21 July 1897 as the National Gallery of British Art. However, from the start it was commonly known as the Tate Gallery, after its founder Sir Henry Tate, and ...
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Joshua Reynolds
Sir Joshua Reynolds (16 July 1723 – 23 February 1792) was an English painter who specialised in portraits. The art critic John Russell (art critic), John Russell called him one of the major European painters of the 18th century, while Lucy Peltz says he was "the leading portrait artist of the 18th-century and arguably one of the greatest artists in the history of art." He promoted the Grand manner, "Grand Style" in painting, which depended on idealisation of the imperfect. He was a founder and first president of the Royal Academy of Arts and was Knight Bachelor, knighted by George III in 1769. He has been referred to as the 'master who revolutionised British Art.' Reynolds had a famously prolific studio that produced over 2,000 paintings during his lifetime. Ellis Waterhouse, EK Waterhouse estimated those works the painter did ‘think worthy’ at ‘hardly less than a hundred paintings which one would like to take into consideration, either for their success, their original ...
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