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- Works of Art
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- Heinrich von Angeli (1840 - 1925)
- The Empress Frederick of Germany as Crown Princess of Prussia
- 1882
- P557
- Front State Room
- Bookmarkable URLVictoria Adelaide Mary Louisa (1840 – 1901) was the eldest child of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. In 1858 she married Frederick Hohenzollern (1831 – 1888), later Crown Prince of Prussia and Emperor of Germany (though he reigned for only ninety days). The Crown Princess was on friendly terms with Sir Richard Wallace. From the Visitor’s Book it is known that she visited Hertford House on at least six occasions between 1879 and 1897 (when she came shortly after Lady Wallace’s death). In a letter to her mother written in 1890 she mentioned Sir Richard Wallace’s ‘splendid House and matchless collection in London, which I know so well and admire so much’. The portrait was probably given to Wallace as part of an exchange of gifts in which the Crown Princess received a toilet mirror which is said to have once belonged to Marie-Antoinette (now at Fulda, Schloss Fasanerie).
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- Cabinet
- Probably Joseph Baumhauer (died 1772)
- France and England
- c. 1765 - c. 1770
- F383
- Front State Room
- Bookmarkable URLA rectangular, break-fronted cabinet veneered with ebony and contre-partie Boulle marquetry and mounted with gilt bronze. The front is divided into three panels corresponding to the doors of the three cupboards behind. There are three gilt bronze figurative reliefs on the front depicting Bacchus, the Flaying of Marsyas and Ceres and on the sides Flora and Hiems. The top is of bleu turquin marble.
This cabinet bears the stamp 'JOSEPH', the mark of Joseph Baumhauer (d. 1772), a Parisian cabinetmaker who seems to have sold his furniture mostly through dealers (called 'marchands-merciers'). His work developed from a more sober Rococo in the 1750s to an academic Neoclassicism in the 1770s and it is from this later period of his career that this cabinet belongs, with its architectural rectangularity and its Vitruvian scroll mount, a characteristic ornament of early French Neoclassicism. It was originally supplied to the marchand mercier Claude-François Julliot with its companion in première-partie marquetry, which is now in a private collection. The figurative mounts on the front and sides are cast from mouldings taken from mounts on furniture by André-Charles Boulle (1642-1732), the buying of which was one of Julliot's specialities. This cabinet is thus a fine example of the re-interpretation of Boulle furniture in terms of early French Neoclassicism.
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- Henry Bone (1755 - 1834)
- Lady Hamilton as a Bacchante, after Vigée Le Brun
- England
- 1803
- M21
- Front State Room
- Bookmarkable URLHenry Bone was appointed Enamel Painter to George III, George IV and William IV and achieved extraordinary financial success with his copies in enamel after Old Master paintings. This enamel is after an oil painting by the French artist Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun (1755–1842) now in a private collection. It shows Emma, Lady Hamilton (1765–1815), the famous wife of Sir William Hamilton, British Envoy in Naples, and mistress of the great naval hero Lord Nelson. The original was painted in 1790. Bone’s copy was commissioned by Sir William Hamilton and bequeathed by him to Nelson in the year it was painted. Emma is shown as a bacchante, a follower of Dionysus, the Greek god of wine. However, Vigée Le Brun also referred to the painting as a representation of Ariadne, the daughter of the King of Crete who helped the Greek hero Theseus to escape from the Labyrinth but who was abandoned by him on the island of Naxos as Emma was abandoned by her first protector Charles Greville. The ship on the horizon may therefore be carrying the departing Theseus. In a further twist to this complex image, Emma's long hair, recumbent pose and revealing dress also evoke many traditional represntations of the Magdalen - perhaps an appropriate reference in view of her colourful early history which included time as a prostitute.
The 4th Marquess of Hertford acquired the miniature in 1859 at the sale of the 2nd Baron Northwick through his London agent Samuel Mawson, who had informed him that 'Lady Hamilton is very beautiful.'
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- Henry Pierce Bone (1779 - 1855)
- Lady Cockburn and her three eldest sons, after Reynolds
- England
- 1842
- M24
- Front State Room
- Bookmarkable URLLady Cockburn had six children and three stepchildren. Remarkably, her sons in this portrait became a Major-General, an Admiral and the Dean of York. Reynolds's composition recalls earlier allegorical representations of Charity, particularly two paintings by Van Dyck, one of which is now in the National Gallery.
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- Filing cabinet and clock
- Attributed to André-Charles Boulle (1642–1732)
- France and England
- c. 1715
- F413
- Front State Room
- Bookmarkable URLThis piece is made up of three elements - a clock resting on a filing cabinet (which has been adapted to be a medal-cabinet), supported by a two-door cupboard. The clock and filing cabinet date from c. 1715 and may be attributed to André-Charles Boulle (1642-1732), although they did not belong together originally. The cupboard base was made in England, probably between 1834 and 1845, when the clock movement was altered, but it incorporates panels of early 18th-century Boulle marquetry on its doors and sides. This piece may be considered part of a general nineteenth-century taste for Boulle furniture.
The front of the medal cabinet comprises a fall front with a panel of turtleshell, against which are mounted gilt-bronze figures of the Three Fates: Clotho standing on the left, Atropos seated in the middle cutting the thread of life, and Lachesis seated on the right. Although the fall front is one of the 19th-century alterations, the English cabinetmaker appears to have taken the mounts of the Three Fates from a Boulle bracket clock, of which there are other models known.
The movement of the clock is by Jean Moisy (1714-82, master 1753), clockmaker to the duchesse du Maine, who was recorded as working in Paris. It was repaired in Paris by Jean-Baptiste Degrez (or Degres) (master 1778), and in Lille by Palmy in 1799, as recorded by marks on the front and back plates. It was extensively altered in London in the mid-19th century, when its present dial, with the forged mark LE, ROY. Â, PARIS, was enamelled by J. Merfield. It was given a new steel-spring pendulum suspension, was changed from back winding to front winding and had a calendar mechanism removed.
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- Pedestal
- Manner of André-Charles Boulle (1642–1732)
- France
- About 1700
- F53
- Front State Room
- Bookmarkable URLThis pedestal and its pair (F54) are almost certainly not by Boulle but probably date from his lifetime. The marquetry is different in character from that on pieces securely attributed to him, with less luxuriant scrolls and strapwork frames that are uncharacteristic of his work. They are, however, related in shape to a model by Boulle that can be seen at the Victoria and Albert Museum. The gilt-bronze scallop shell motif, with acanthus below, which decorates the fronts of these pedestals, is also found, mounted the other way up, on two octagonal pedestals attributed to Boulle in the J. Paul Getty Museum. It can also be seen on another pedestal in the Wallace Collection (F52). The presence of this mount is, however, insufficient to support an attribution to Boulle.
Pedestals like this derive their form ultimately from the marble or stone pedestals used to support sculptural busts and hardstone vases.
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- Pedestal
- Manner of André-Charles Boulle (1642–1732)
- France
- About 1700
- F54
- Front State Room
- Bookmarkable URLThis pedestal and its pair (F53) are almost certainly not by Boulle but probably date from his lifetime. The marquetry is different in character from that on pieces securely attributed to him, with less luxuriant scrolls and strapwork frames that are uncharacteristic of his work. They are, however, related in shape to a model by Boulle that can be seen at the Victoria and Albert Museum. The gilt-bronze scallop shell motif, with acanthus below, which decorates the fronts of these pedestals, is also found, mounted the other way up, on two octagonal pedestals attributed to Boulle in the J. Paul Getty Museum. It can also be seen on another pedestal in the Wallace Collection (F52). The presence of this mount is, however, insufficient to support an attribution to Boulle.
Pedestals like this derive their form ultimately from the marble or stone pedestals used to support sculptural busts and hardstone vases.
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- Chandelier
- Jacques Caffiéri (1678–1755)
- France
- c. 1751
- F84
- Front State Room
- Bookmarkable URLThis nine-light gilt-bronze chandelier by Jacques Caffiéri, which is displayed in the Front State Room of the Wallace Collection, was acquired by Sir Richard Wallace in Paris in November 1871, along with the twelve-light chandelier (F83), which hangs next door in the Back State Room. Both chandeliers are signed by Caffiéri. Both previously hung in the palace of Colorno, north of Parma, and are believed to have been given by Louis XV to his eldest daughter, Louise-Élisabeth (1727–1759), who had married Don Felipe, younger son of Philip V of Spain, in 1739. In 1748 Louis XV obtained, for his daughter and son-in-law, the duchy of Parma in Northern Italy and it was probably to furnish their palaces in Parma and Colorno that he gave them the chandeliers. Madame Infante, as his daughter was known, made three trips to Paris after her marriage and is known to have taken back to Parma a large quantity of coaches and wagons filled with furniture and other objects, some of which may have been owned by Louis XV.
The chandelier has drip-pans cast as sunflowers on the ends of its arms; the same motif appears on the central branches of a set of four gilt-bronze wall-lights in the J. Paul Getty Museum, which also bear nineteenth-century inventory numbers from the palace of Colorno. The wall-lights and the nine-light chandelier may, in the lifetime of Louise-Élisabeth, have furnished the same room.
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- After Antoine Coysevox (1640 - 1720)
- Crouching Venus
- France
- Early 18th century
- S188
- Front State Room
- Bookmarkable URLObtaining full-sized marble copies of antique sculpture had been a long-lasting aspiration of many French kings since the sixteenth century. Numerous copies were commissioned for Louis XIV through the French Academy in Rome in the second half of the seventeenth.
The marble copy of the Crouching Venus was carved by the king’s sculptor, Antoine Coysevox and displayed in the Parterre du Nord at the Château de Versailles paired with a copy of another famed antiquity, the Arrotino or Knife-grinder made by the Florentine sculptor Giovanni Battista Foggini (1652–1725). Whereas Foggini surely copied an original at the time in the Uffizi, it is uncertain which of the many existing antique variants of the Crouching Venus served as the model for Coysevox.
The two originals were unrelated, but their pairing at Versailles popularised them as a pendant often reproduced in small-scale bronze replicas such as our pair.
Our bronzes, probably made in France in the early eighteenth century were acquired by the 3rd Marquess.
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- Musical clock
- Attributed to Jean-Claude Chambellan Duplessis the Elder (about 1695–1774)
- France
- 1763
- F96
- Front State Room
- Bookmarkable URLThis spring-driven musical mantel clock (called a 'pendule à musique') is attributed to Jean-Claude Chambellan Duplessis the Elder. The carillon plays a different tune each hour from a total repertoire of 14 tunes. Molinier was the first to attribute the clock to Duplessis, comparing it to the wall-lights attributed to him in the Isaac de Camondo collection, which show a combination of leaves and berries similar to those on the sprays that flank the case of the clock. Its movement is by Pierre Daillé, and the carillon itself is the work of Michel Stollewerck, who made elaborate astronomical movements, such as that of the clock F98, but also conventional clock movements, such as that of the wall clock F255.
In 2010, in order to avoid further wear and tear to the particularly complex and delicate carillon movement, a miniatured sound system was installed inside the clock, enabling the tunes to be replaced with digital recordings. This innovative system, developed by sound engineer John Leonard and senior furniture conservator, Jurgen Huber, is activated by the clock’s ‘going train’ movement, and plays the original tunes of the musical clock, on the hour, every hour. The clock movement itself remains unaffected by the device but allows the visitors to enjoy the wonderfully evocative and arresting sound of the chimes whilst protecting the delicate mechanical musical movement for posterity.
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- After Giovanni Battista Foggini (1652 - 1725)
- The Arrotino (Knife-Grinder)
- France
- c. 1700 - 1715
- S189
- Front State Room
- Bookmarkable URLIn 1684 the then Director of the French Academy in Rome commissioned a copy of the famous antique sculpture known as the Arrotino (Knife-grinder) ¬ at that time in the Uffizi in Florence– for King Louis XIV.
The marble copy of the Arrotino was made by the Florentine sculptor Giovanni Battista Foggini and was displayed in the Parterre du Nord at the Château de Versailles paired with a marble copy of the Crouching Venus, another famed antiquity, carved by the king’s sculptor, Antoine Coysevox (1640–1720).
The two originals were unrelated, but their pairing at Versailles popularised them as a pendant often reproduced in small-scale bronze replicas such as our pair. Our bronzes, probably made in France in the early eighteenth century were acquired by the 3rd Marquess.
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- Circle of François Girardon (1628–1715)
- Alexander the Great
- France
- c. 1700
- S227
- Front State Room
- Bookmarkable URLThe young warrior of this bust can be easily identified as Alexander III of Macedonia (356–323 BC), known as The Great.
Having unified Greece, Asia Minor and Egypt under his control, Alexander – who could count the great philosopher Aristotle as his tutor – became king of Persia at the age of 25. Various symbols on his helmet point to this identification, as does the clasp on his cloak which might represent his father, Philip II of Macedon (r. 359–336 BC).
The bust has been linked by some scholars to the work of French court sculptor François Girardon (128–1715), who in 1699 exhibited at the Salon a fragmentary antique porphyry head of Alexander which he had “restored” adding a green marble and bronze armour and cloak.
Whether or not the model for our bronze was made in the circle of Girardon, the composition is consistent with the way Alexander was portrayed in the late seventeenth century, when the image of Alexander was often symbolically used to celebrate the glory of the Sun King, Louis XIV.