The Collections

Castle Howard has many world-renowned treasures and today its dramatic interiors are filled with world-famous collections of paintings, antiquities, bronzes, furniture and tapestries gathered by successive generations of the Howard family on their Grand Tours. 

The Picture Collection

The core of the picture collection was gathered by three generations in just under a hundred years. The 3rd, 4th and 5th Earls each purchased widely as they toured Europe, but of all the Continental influences the strongest was that of Italy.

The 3rd Earl began to collect pictures, tapestries and sculpture during the early years of the 18th century, but these were acquired more with a view to furnishing his newly built house than with the aim of consciously starting up a collection.

Typical of this is the work of Marco Ricci, whose paintings filled the interiors with dramatic and fantastic landscapes; many of these were over-door or over-mantel pieces and were lost in the fire of 1940. Recently however, a number of Ricci landscapes have been restored and put on display for the first time in over half a century.

Although the 4th Earl was a collector of antique sculpture, his love of Italy manifested itself most strongly in his purchase of paintings by Paolo Pannini, Francesco Zuccarelli and, most importantly, Canaletto.

Nearly fifty pictures attributed to Canaletto are known to have existed in the collection, but many of these pictures are now recognised to be by Canaletto's contemporaries, Michele Marieschi and Bernardo Bellotto. Some of these views were sold at the end of the 19th century, more were destroyed in the fire of 1940 and the remainder auctioned afterwards. Today only four paintings from this once impressive Venetian collection remain in the House.

Like his father and his grandfather before him, the 5th Earl visited Italy and absorbed its artistic treasures. He purchased widely on the Continent and in London, and in addition to collecting Italian Old Masters he patronised English artists too: Sir Joshua Reynolds (who painted him three times), Johan Zoffany; William Marlow and Thomas Gainsborough.

The climax to his collecting occurred in 1798 when he acquired thirteen Italian Old Masters and two Dutch and Flemish pictures from the Orleans Collection. Among these were paintings by Leandro Bassano, Bedoli, Bellini, Annibale Carracci, Domenichino, Orazio Gentileschi, and Titian.

In 1805 the 5th Earl published a printed catalogue of the collection at Castle Howard, listing 111 paintings, with brief descriptive notes, thought to have been overseen by himself. By the time of the fourth edition of the catalogue in 1845, the number had grown to 274 pictures. His son, the 6th Earl, did not travel or collect as extensively as his father, but one of his few purchases was a portrait by John Jackson of his youngest daughter.

The final chapter in the history of the collection begins with the 9th Earl and Countess, who commissioned William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones and Walter Crane to decorate their three homes. As an accomplished painter himself the 9th Earl moved in Pre-Raphaelite circles, as well as among other eminent English artists of the day, including Lord Leighton and G.F. Watts. During these years the link between Castle Howard and Italy was revived when, in 1865, the Earl met the Italian artist Giovanni Costa, and under his tutelage he developed his landscape painting repertoire, and eventually formed the Etruscan School of painters in 1882. Renowned for its landscapes of the Italian campagna the group included Costa, Lord Leighton, Watts and W.B. Richmond. Among the Earl's own paintings is a delightful portrait of Costa at work in the grounds of Naworth Castle.

Porcelain

There are more than 300 pieces of porcelain displayed in the mahogany cabinet on the China Landing, including pieces from the Chelsea, Meissen, Derby and Sevres factories.

On display in the Crimson Dining Room is the Crown Derby dessert service of 1796-1801 The practice of decorating porcelain with naturalistic flowers began at Meissen around 1740, and the production of botanical dessert services started at Derby about 1790-91. The flower painters at Derby did not copy their specimens direct from life, but used some of the most important illustrated flower books for their source material. The plants and flowers portrayed on each piece are accurate representations of specimens as depicted in two contemporary publications, William Curtis's popular Botanical Magazine begun in 1787, and John Edwards's A Collection of Flowers (1783-95).

Sculpture

The antique busts, statues, marble columns and table-tops were acquired by the 4th Earl largely during his second tour of Italy in 1738-39. Today these pieces line the Antique Passage which, as an undecorated, stone corridor, acts as a foretaste to the architectural and sculptural drama of the Great Hall, where busts and full-length figures are on display.

The Kelly Murals

Following the fire in 1940 the Garden Sallon was completely destroyed and lay derelict until the late 1970s when, in conjunction with Granada Television and the filming of Brideshead Revisited, it was completely rebuilt to the design of Lord Howard, with the architect Julian Bicknell. The artist Felix Kelly was commissioned to paint a series of capriccios depicting imaginary Vanbrugh buildings, which incorporate features from Castle Howard. These imaginary scenes are a vivid reminder of how each generation of the family has added to the collections, very often reflecting contemporary tastes and styles.

Wine Cooler

This enormous wine cooler was presented to Lord Morpeth (later 7th Earl of Carlisle), following his defeat in the parliamentary election of 1841. It must surely rank as the finest of consolation prizes!

Made in Leeds and costing over a thousand guineas, the body was made from bog oak, found on one of the Howard estates in Yorkshire, stained black and French polished, and mounted in silver gilt. On each side are Lord Morpeth's arms, and around these are the arms of twenty-five polling places of the districts into which the West Riding was divided (some of these today are in Lancashire). The lid is surmounted by the Howard lion crest and the scroll.

The William Morris Screen

These three embroidered panels are from a set of eight depicting figures of women based loosely around Chaucer's poem The Legend of Good Women. These embroideries were originally executed to decorate the drawing room in The Red House, Bexleyheath, where William and Jane Morris lived in shortly after their marriage in 1859.

A lifetime supporter of Morris, and enthusiast for his designs, in 1887 the 9th Countess purchased three of these panels which were fitted into an oak-framed screen. The panels depict three heroines: from left to right, Lucretia with a sword, Hippolyte with a lance, and Helen of Troy with a torch. They stand on plots of grass filled with flowers, in front of a low brick wall, against a background of flowers and trees.