Walpole paintings return to London - Report from Europe - Brief Article

Magazine Antiques, Sept, 2002 by Miriam Kramer

Robert Walpole, first earl of Orford, who became Britain's first prime minister in 1721, began to collect paintings in the 1720s. By 1736 he had more than four hundred scattered among his four houses.

The impressive list of artists represented in his collection include Peter Paul Rubens, Guido Reni, Salvator Rosa, Rembrandt van Rijn, Nicolas Poussin, Bartolome Esteban Murillo, Claude Lorrain, and Anthony van Dyck. Unfortunately, the profligacy of Walpole's grandson George Walpole, third earl of Orford, meant that more than half the works in Robert Walpole's splendid Palladian house Houghton Hall in Norfolk had to be sold at auction. Despite the best efforts of politicians and connoisseurs to save the collection for the nation, it was dispersed.

Catherine the Great of Russia was a major purchaser at the sale, buying 204 works for [pounds sterling]40,455. In 1779 she dispatched a ship to bring them to Russia.

An exhibition at the Hermitage Rooms in Somerset House in London brings thirty-four of the Walpole paintings back to England. Entitled Painting Passion and Politics: Masterpieces from the Walpole Collection, it is on view from September 28 until February 23, 2003. The curators are Larissa Dukelskaya of the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg and Brian Allen of the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art in London. The exhibition is supported by the Open Russia Foundation. The catalogue to the exhibition, entitled A Capitol Collection: Houghton Hall and the Hermitage, has been edited by Dukelskaya and Andrew Moore. It is published by Yale University Press and may be ordered by telephoning 800-288-2129.