Comments on: Mixing Greek and Chinese Regency style at Castle Coole

By: Emile de Bruijn

Emile de Bruijn — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 08:11:12 +0000

Columnist, they were supplied by the Preston firm in 1811, in a set of twelve. The low glass-fronted cabinets, the pier tables (with their very Regency gilded panther-headed legs) and pier glasses came from the same source.

By: columnist

columnist — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 03:31:50 +0000

The bowed shape (at the back, in profile) of the chairs placed around the round table by the window in the Bow Room is really exquisite. Do you know the maker / style?

By: Emile de Bruijn

Emile de Bruijn — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 12:17:00 +0000

As you will have found out, he was an Irish painter influenced by Corot and the Barbizon School. There seems to be one other French scene by him at Castle Coole, showing a bay at Cassis. Although I haven’t seen the complete files on these paintings, they may have been acquired during the time of Somerset, 4th Earl of Belmore, who inherited Castle Coole in 1845 and died in 1913.

By: François-Marc Chaballier

François-Marc Chaballier — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 11:41:05 +0000

Thank you for your response. I shall now google Nathaniel Hone the Younger of whom, I confess, I had never hear.

By: Emile de Bruijn

Emile de Bruijn — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 07:47:35 +0000

Mary, thank you. The cabinets are certainly rather splendid, combining as they do elements taken from English mid-eighteenth-century chinoiserie furniture and garden pavilions and from French-inspired neo-classicism.

François-Marc, indeed it is the Pont du Gard, well spotted! The painting is by Nathaniel Hone the Younger (1831-1917). The room also contains engravings after Claude-Joseph Vernet’s ‘Ports of France’, and views of the Bay of Naples, weaving a kind of French-neo-classical theme in addition to the chinoiserie.

By: François-Marc Chaballier

François-Marc Chaballier — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 23:32:31 +0000

Am I imagining things, or is the picture above the fireplace in the Bow Room one of the Roman aqueduct known as the Pont du Gard, not far from Nîmes?

Thank you for this ever fascinating and instructive blog.

By: Mary Tindukasiri

Mary Tindukasiri — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 17:52:16 +0000

So beautiful, perfection. The chinoiserie cabinet must be the best of its kind. Thank you. Mary