For every great country house of the Georgian period, there was usually also a town house. Chatsworth, for example, the home of the Devonshires, has officially been recognised as one of the country’s favourite national treasures - but most of its visitors know little of Devonshire House, which the family once owned in the capital. In part, this is because town houses were often leased, rather than being passed down through generations as country estates were. But, most crucially, many London town houses, including Devonshire House, no longer exist, having been demolished in the early twentieth century.
This book seeks to place centre-stage the hugely important yet hitherto overlooked town houses of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, exploring the prime position they once occupied in the lives of families and the nation as a whole. It explores the owners, how they furnished and used these properties, and how their houses were judged by the various types of visitor who gained access.
Preface Sir Nicholas Penny Acknowledgements Map: Locations of the Principal Georgian London town houses Discussed in this book List of illustrations Introduction Kate Retford Part One: Architecture, Furnishing, Decorating 1. A House Divided: Building Biographies and the Town House in Georgian London, Matthew Jenkins and Charlotte Newman 2. ‘You never saw such a scene of magnificence and taste’: Norfolk House after its Grand Reopening in 1756, Jeremy Howard 3. The Refurbishment of Northumberland House: Craftsmen and Interior Decoration in Mid-Eighteenth-Century London Town Houses, Adriano Aymonino and Manolo Guerci 4. Town and Country: The Spencers of Althorp, Joseph Friedman 5. The Regency Transformation of Burlington House, Piccadilly: The Architectural Drawings of Samuel Ware in the Royal Academy of Arts, Neil Bingham Part Two: Buying, Collecting, Display 6. The Display and Reception of Private Picture Collections in London Town Houses, 1780–1830, Susannah Homer 7. Superb Cabinets or Splendid Anachronisms? Anatomy, Natural History and Fine Arts in the London Town House, Helen McCormack 8. Artist in Residence: Joshua Reynolds at No 47, Leicester Fields, Donato Esposito 9. The Pictures at Carlton House, Desmond Shawe Taylor 10. Glitter and fashion in the ‘Louvre of London’: Animating Cleveland House, Anne Nellis Richter 11. John Julius Angerstein and the Development of his Art Collection at No 100, Pall Mall, London, Susanna Avery-Quash Afterword Joseph Friedman and Susanna Avery-Quash Select Bibliography Picture credits Index
Kate Retford is Senior Lecturer in History of Art, Birkbeck College, University of London, UK. Susanna Avery-Quash is Senior Research Curator (History of Collecting), The National Gallery London, UK.
Reviews for The Georgian London Town House: Building, Collecting and Display
Visually thrilling and engaging throughout, this collection makes a timely intervention in several fields, and will probably become a cornerstone text for scholars working across architectural history, material culture, social history, history of collecting and art history. Signposting archival and museum resources alongside compelling methodological frameworks, The Georgian London Town House issues a rallying cry for future scholarship and proposes exciting and myriad ways in which we might look to reanimate these previously obscured worlds. * Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies * A major contribution to scholarship, mostly well written and carefully edited ... The book is generally attractive and well produced. * Transactions of the Ancient Monuments Society *
