PRESS INFORMATION
Contact:
Catherine Fenston 44.207.389.2982
Clare Roberts 44.207.389.2964
LONGLEAT TO SECURE LONG-TERM FUTURE AND BENEFIT FROM MAJOR ENDOWMENT FUND
Lord Bath and his Trustees instruct Christie's to raise in excess of £15 million
Works of Art from Longleat - 13 & 14 June 2002
London - The Marquess of Bath and his Trustees have taken the prudent but difficult decision to set up a very substantial maintenance fund for the preservation of Longleat House and the core historic collection and estate. The maintenance fund will be established through the sale of works of art at Christie's.
Christie's has been instructed to sell a superb group of paintings, furniture, books and manuscripts, silver and porcelain to raise over £15 million and to offer, in lieu of tax, further works of art to the nation following the auction. The funds raised will provide a maintenance fund to secure the fabric of the house, gardens and estate as well as the integrity of the major part of the collections in perpetuity. All the objects have been very carefully selected for sale so as to preserve the core collections at Longleat.
"I have had the privilege to live at Longleat for the best part of my life and it has given me huge pleasure. I love the place and have enjoyed sharing it with thousands of people year after year. I intend to continue that link which will only be possible if we have enough resources to maintain and conserve our family home. To finance the maintenance fund we shall have to sell chattels and my concern here has been not to damage the Longleat collections. We are lucky in that a considerable number of items came to Longleat just after the War from Norton Hall, Northamptonshire, and so have no long-term connection with the House. It is these items which will form the basis of an auction sale at Christie's this summer. This is no easy decision but we believe it to be the right one if Longleat is to remain a vibrant, living entity", said Lord Bath.
"It is an honour for Christie's to have been entrusted with a sale that will make such a major contribution to the long-term preservation of one of England's treasure houses", said Lord Hindlip, Chairman of Christie's. "The sale extends Christie's long history spanning nearly three centuries of conducting the most significant single-owner sales and follows on from some of the greatest sales in recent auction history including Houghton, Bute, Wentworth as well as works of art from the Wernher Foundation and the Rothschild auctions."
The selection process has been painstaking. A number of works of art at Longleat were assembled by family members less closely connected with Longleat. These include the group of pictures and books and manuscripts in the sale which are drawn from the remarkable collection of Beriah Botfield, the Victorian bibliophile and antiquarian, who asserted that the Thynnes and the Botfields were descended from two brothers living during the reign of Edward IV. Botfield died in 1863 leaving a life interest to his widow Elizabeth Seymour. On her death it was the intention of his will to found a junior branch of the Thynne family at Norton Hall, Northamptonshire, so his estate and his collection then passed to the Thynne family. The pictures and books actually came to Longleat some time after the death of Lady Beatrice Thynne in 1941. While their loss will be regretted, the Botfield property does not form part of the spectacular arrangements fashioned by John Diblee Crace for the 4th Marquess.
The paintings to be offered consist almost entirely of Dutch Old Master pictures that were acquired during the 1840s by Botfield. Amongst the most important examples are a pair of full-length portraits by Gerard Terborch (estimate: £500,000-700,000); the Portrait of a Silversmith, thought to be Christian van Vianen, by Thomas de Keyser (estimate: £300,000-500,000) and a number of classic Dutch landscapes led by Salomon van Ruysdael's View of Alkmaar (estimate: £400,000-600,000). The section will also include four important works by van Goyen.
Longleat is extraordinarily rich in English and European furniture with some of the finest examples of French, Italian, Dutch and German pieces seen in any country house. Many works were collected by the 2nd Marquess and also the 4th Marquess who refurbished the State Rooms in part by acquiring exotic Italian furniture inspired by Venetian interiors. Works to be sold have been selected very carefully so as to preserve the 4th Marquess' arrangements for the interiors. The selection of furniture has also been taken from pieces that came to Longleat in later years either from the family house on Grosvenor Square as well as some items from the Botfield collection from Norton Hall, which include some fine pieces of Regency furniture. Highlights of the superb furniture are a magnificent bureau à cylindre by David Roentgen (estimate: £500,000-800,000) and an important Louis XV ormolu-mounted kingwood and parquetry games-table by Guillaume Kemp which offers over twenty different games including a roulette circlet and a backgammon well (estimate: £80,000-120,000). A fine pair of Empire ormolu and Japanese lacquer cabinets stamped Jacob D. Rue Meslée (estimate: £200,000-300,000) and a Russian Nicholas I ormolu-mounted malachite tazza (estimate: £30,000-50,000), given as a token for the Earl and Countess of Dunmore for their hospitality by Count and Countess Potocki in 1840, are further highlights.
The selection of furniture for sale again leaves untouched core elements of the French furniture at Longleat. The great Boulle table has already been accepted in lieu and BVRB I's masterpiece, the gold and polychrome commode, and the Marquis de Talleyrand's desk by Philippe Garnier remain in the State Drawing Room.
Also included in the porcelain, pottery and glass section of the sale are four magnificent life-size Meissen models by Johann Kändler; a fox (estimate: £400,000-600,000), a turkey (estimate: £300,000-400,000) and a pair of vultures, one modelled in upright position (estimate: £250,000-350,000) and one perched on a tree stump (estimate: £100,000-150,000). The figures are remarkable for their power, vivacity and the originality of their modelling. These animals were created for the Saxon-Elector Augustus the Strong's Japanese Palace in Dresden in the 1731-35 period and rank as some of the most astonishing and impressive porcelain sculptures ever created. Hard-paste porcelain had not long been discovered when Augustus first conceived his ambition to furnish an entire palace with life-size porcelain animals. It was the white clay found at Meissen that produced the new version of the material which rivalled porcelain that hitherto could only be imported from China or Japan. Longleat contains more of these remarkable works of art than any other house in England, and even after the removal of these four pieces, all of which are duplicates, the house will still have the best representation of Kändler's masterpieces. They are not currently on general display due to their great fragility but the intention is to display the remaining six pieces including the great lion, so redolent of the spirit of Longleat.
Revealed from the vaults is a group of gold boxes and superb silver. Again, the majority of Longleat's silver remains at the house including Paul Crespin's extraordinary rococo silver-mounted tortoiseshell punchbowl, which was one of Longleat's two contributions to the Treasure Houses exhibition in Washington in 1985.
If an historian were asked to single out one thing from Longleat above all others for special mention, it would have to be the Library. In addition to the collection formed over more than five centuries by various members of the Thynne family, the library was enriched by the bequest of the Botfield collection in 1863, although the books were not moved to Longleat until after the Second World War. Botfield was a collector on a grand scale, and the collection brought to Longleat includes a fine selection of incunabula, Caxton imprints, first editions of the Greek and Latin classics, and magnificent travel and natural history books.
Among books selected for sale now is the first book printed in the English language, by William Caxton at Bruges, before he introduced the printing press to England (Raoul Le Fevre's Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye, 1473; (estimate: £300,000-400,000). Longleat retains Sir John Thynne's copy of the same book, which he acquired even before building the house. Two superb illuminated manuscripts, a Flemish vellum of Jean de Quesne's translation into French of Caesar's De bello Gallico (estimate: £300,000-400,000), 1479, and a Virgil illustrated by the great Florentine illuminator Francesco d'Antonio del Chierico (estimate: £400,000-600,000) lead the section. A complete copy of Durandus, Rationale, printed on vellum in Mainz, 1459 (estimate: £400,000-600,000) is the second oldest printed book ever sold by Christie's (after the Gutenberg Bible). Further highlights include original drawings by Manetti, Storia deglie uccelli, Florence, 1767-76 (estimate: £200,000-300,000), and an album of original watercolour views of Calcutta by James Baillie Fraser, circa 1820, which are among the finest watercolours ever produced by this great Scottish artist of the Orient (estimate: £150,000-200,000).
Raising sums in excess of £15 million from any great house is never easy, however both Lord Bath, his Trustees and Christie's believe that the present sale will not affect the unique character of Longleat where annual visitor numbers have averaged 400,000 over the past 10 years. Lord Bath's instructions to Christie's were "I don't want anyone to notice that you've been there after you've finished". Christie's believe they have adhered to these instructions.
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Images available on request
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