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PROPERTY FROM CAPESTHORNE HALL Capesthorne Hall, the imposing neo-Jacobean seat of the Davenports with its immense façade can - as Lenette Bromley-Davenport wrote in a recent guidebook - 'repel violently, or attract irrevocably', but 'great and mysterious, [it] carries within its heart the secrets and dreams of many families'. First mentioned in the Domesday survey of 1086, it was not until the marriage in 1721 of the Capesthorne heiress Penelope Ward with Davies I, the son of Monk Davenport and Elizabeth Davies, that the estate came into the Davenport family. It was from the extensive travels of their great-grandsons, Edward 'Ned' Davies Davenport (1778-1847) and his younger brother, the Rev. Walter Davenport Bromley (1787-1862), that Capesthorne became filled with its great art treasures. Edward 'Ned' Davies Davenport was born into the Age of Enlightenment. A rebel by nature, Ned was against dogma, but for learning through observation and experiment. In opposition to his Tory father, Edward became a Whig M.P., attracting a wide circle of liberal and radical friends, including Harriet Martineau, Lord John Russell, Thomas Attwood, Lord Holland, Richard Cobden, Sydney Smith, Francis Burdett among others. His intellectual curiosity took him to the island of Elba and allowed him an interview with Napoleon, who deeply impressed him with his 'candour, naiveté and wonderful knowledge of the world'. He subsequently toured Italy, where he acquired his collection of ancient sculpture, Etruscan terracottas, and vases, some of which are said to have come from Lucien Bonaparte's excavations. Such attribution arose from a note in the Bassegio sale, London 1838, where they were said to be 'principally found at Vulci', and hence linked to the necropolis on the estates of Lucien Bonaparte (made Prince of Canino by Pope Pius VII). As soon as Edward inherited Capesthorne in 1837 he invited Edward Blore, architect to William IV and Queen Victoria, to remodel and enlarge the 18th Century Palladian house in order to make an impact on the flat Cheshire plain as well as open up spacious interiors. The neo-classical library is among the interior views that survive in the watercolours of the joiner, James Johnson and which were illustrated in John Cornforth, English Interiors 1790-1848, London, 1978, pp. 73-75, pls. 75-80. In 1843 Edward commissioned Joseph Paxton to design a heated glass conservatory, an innovation in its time and a forerunner of the design for the Crystal Palace of the Great Exhibition in 1851. William, the son of the Rev. Walter Davenport Bromley, inherited Capesthorne Hall on the death of his cousin in 1867. Capesthorne was then still being reconstructed by Anthony Salvin, following a devastating fire in 1861. He was thus able to unite the early Italian paintings and the art treasures of his father, who had lived at Wootton Hall, along with the antiquities of his uncle. Subsequently many of the paintings found their way into museums around the world including the National Gallery, London, the Metropolitan Museum, New York, Cleveland, Turin, Milan, Budapest, Berlin and Melbourne. The fine portrait of Charlotte Davenport (the mother of Edward Davies Davenport) by Romney was sold at Christie's in 1926 for a record sum and now hangs in the Mellon collection in the National Gallery in Washington, D.C.

ENGLISH SCHOOL

VIEW OF CAPESTHORNE HALL

Details

ENGLISH SCHOOL
VIEW OF CAPESTHORNE HALL
lithograph
10¾ x 17¾ in. (27.3 x 45 cm.);
with a repoduction of a lithograph of the West view of Capesthorne Hall
two in the lot (2)

Special notice

No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 15% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis.

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