Eccentrics are often the life force of art. Think, for example, of the wild individuality of artists such as William Blake, someone who stood outside the mainstream, ignored by the establishment, but pursued his own highly personal vision. Hailed as a forbidding crank in his time, he is now regarded as a major, if idiosyncratic, artist pursuing a particular search for truth. A near contemporary of Blake’s was the writer and collector Horace Walpole, who, while not a visual artist, had a keen eye for the odd and beautiful, whether in objects, furniture, curiosities, objets d’art, paintings or drawings.
These treasures are brought together in this crowded but fascinating exhibition.
Born the youngest son of the Prime Minister, Robert “Bulldog” Walpole, and cousin of Lord Nelson, he received the best education available, attending Eton and King’s College, Cambridge. Like other wealthy gentlemen of his class, his education included the Grand Tour, travelling around the renowned historical cities of Europe. His travelling companion was the poet Thomas Gray, with whom he had a quarrel, a disagreement that is generally thought to be a lover’s tiff. Walpole, whose sexual orientation is generally assumed to be for his own sex, was described by his contemporaries as effeminate, while – maliciously – one political opponent dubbed him a hermaphrodite horse, and others saw him as asexual, a common response to a challenging sexual identity.
On his return to England, following in his father’s footsteps, he entered Parliament, becoming Member for Callington, Cornwall. Although he remained an MP, even following the death of his father, he was not politically ambitious and was more taken with pursuing his own career as a writer and connoisseur.
Today he is largely remembered for his house Strawberry Hill, a Gothic folly he built in Twickenham, south-west London. Here, with remarkable foresight and unaffected by fashion, he recreated the romantic but slightly intimidating Gothic style in a rambling, asymmetrical assortment of towers, turrets and crenellations many decades before his Victorian successors. Walpole also invented the Gothic novel with a heady combination of romance, melodrama and horror. His novel, The Castle of Otranto, was a great success.
Large and rambling, Strawberry Hill was filled with carefully selected objects, becoming a cabinet of curiosities with virtually every available surface covered at a time when discerning collectors were amassing ancient as well as modern objects. The British Museum was set up at much the same time.
Objects were chosen as much for their personal and sentimental qualities as for their historical or artistic interest, with the quality ranging from a superb suit of Renaissance armour to the hair of Mary Tudor in a gold locket, and the red hat of Cardinal Wolsey. Paintings include a double portrait by the Elizabethan painter Hans Eworth, work by Allan Ramsay and Joshua Reynolds, as well as many watercolours showing the interior of the house during Walpole’s lifetime. Walpole was the first to recognise the significance of the portrait miniature to the history of British art.
With its combination of fantasy and reality, much of the pleasure of the exhibition is the way it takes us inside the head of Walpole himself, the diversity of the objects suggesting the intellect of a man who turned collecting into a form of self-expression.
* Horace Walpole and Strawberry Hill continues until July 4. Following extensive restoration Strawberry Hill will re-open to the public in September
