拍品专文
This astonishing Gothic library was one of the principal reception rooms in Stanmore Hall, a large Tudor revival house with an irregular gabled front and romantic turreted and castellated skyline, built in 1847 of Kent ragstone by John Macduff Derick for John Rhodes, in a beautiful five-acre site with extensive views over London. Robert Hollond must have been the first occupier since the library is decorated all over with his family motto and heraldry, even to the stained glass panels in the windows. The room has been installed as a complete decorative package with every detail designed in a highly fanciful pattern-book Gothic revival style. The lamp standards with Medieval female figures holding the candles are reminiscent of the suite of candleabra stands of Coadestone made for the Prince Regent's Carlton House in 1810. The cailing with its compartments filled with painted banners and heraldry is like schemes by the Crace decorating firm carried out at Knebworth House and in the newly built House of Lords. The black-and-gold furniture is distinctive and both this and the entire room may have been designed by the architect of the house,
The Hollonds were an unconventional family; Robert Hollond was Member of Parliament for Hastings, but also a balloonist. He and his wife, the authoress and philanthropist Ellen Julia (née Teed, 1822-1884) spent part of each year in Paris, where she presided over a literary and artistic Salon, which was also a Royalist meeting place. Mrs Hollond was a friend of the academic painter Ary Scheffer, and modelled for one of his most successful subjects, St. Augustine et St. Monique (for which he modelled St. Augustine0, which was exhibited in 1846 and scorned by Baudelaire, who found the attempt to portray religious ecstacy absurd - against the opinions of other critics, who admired it greatly. The painting is now in the National Gallery, London. She was a publshed author and her philanthropic activities included the establishment of the first crèche in London as well as nurses homes in Paris and Nice.
The house was bought in 1889 by the Australian mining millionaire William Knox d'Arcy and alterations and additions were made by the Ipswich architect Brightwen Binyon. D'Arcy then commissioned decorations of great magnificence from Morris & Co., which William Morris carried out much against his inclinations since he loathed both the house and the patron. The Gothic library survived until compartively recently, when the badly decayed house was devastated by fire in 1979. The structure has been sympathetically rebuilt, but the view is marred by a large office addition
The Hollonds were an unconventional family; Robert Hollond was Member of Parliament for Hastings, but also a balloonist. He and his wife, the authoress and philanthropist Ellen Julia (née Teed, 1822-1884) spent part of each year in Paris, where she presided over a literary and artistic Salon, which was also a Royalist meeting place. Mrs Hollond was a friend of the academic painter Ary Scheffer, and modelled for one of his most successful subjects, St. Augustine et St. Monique (for which he modelled St. Augustine0, which was exhibited in 1846 and scorned by Baudelaire, who found the attempt to portray religious ecstacy absurd - against the opinions of other critics, who admired it greatly. The painting is now in the National Gallery, London. She was a publshed author and her philanthropic activities included the establishment of the first crèche in London as well as nurses homes in Paris and Nice.
The house was bought in 1889 by the Australian mining millionaire William Knox d'Arcy and alterations and additions were made by the Ipswich architect Brightwen Binyon. D'Arcy then commissioned decorations of great magnificence from Morris & Co., which William Morris carried out much against his inclinations since he loathed both the house and the patron. The Gothic library survived until compartively recently, when the badly decayed house was devastated by fire in 1979. The structure has been sympathetically rebuilt, but the view is marred by a large office addition