View of the royal wedding garden party from the Powis Castle terraces. ©National Trust/Emma Marshall
To celebrate the recent royal wedding, the colleagues at Powis Castle threw open the garden for free and invited everyone to come and watch the event on a giant screen.
A local marching band led a procession to Powis from nearby Welshpool, including the Mayor and many people in wedding costume and fancy dress. In all over 5,000 people came and the atmosphere was very festive.
Powis Castle, with its terraced gardens below. ©NTPL/Andrew Butler
One of the reasons why we were keen to acquire the Sargent drawing I mentioned last week is that the sitter, Violet, Countess of Powis, played an important role in revitalizing the gardens at Powis Castle in the Edwardian period.
Violet, Countess of Powis, by Ellis Roberts. ©NTPL/John Hammond/Powis Estate Trustees
There was another portret of her already on show at Powis Castle, by Ellis Roberts, but that depicts her in the 1880s. The Sargent, which was done in 1912, by contrast, is from the time she had just started taking the garden in hand.
View from the terraces. The Edwardian gardens created by Lady Powis can be seen in the middle distance. ©NTPL/Andrew Butler
She enriched the planting on the terraces below the castle, which frame the building and provide myriad views into the surrounding landscape.
The Fountain Garden, one of gardens created by Lady Powis. ©NTPL/Andrew Butler
Lady Powis also made a series of entirely new gardens, on the site of the decayed eighteenth-century kitchen garden. Like an archetypal designer she exclaimed grandly ’I see velvet lawns and wide paths: rose gardens – fountains – clipped yews – marble seats – herbaceous borders’ – and her vision became reality.
The wyvern-topped gate commissioned by Lady Powis in 1912. ©NTPL/Andrew Butler
Despite their Edwardian grandeur, the new gardens were intended to fit into the overall Baroque setting at Powis Castle. Lady Powis also commissioned new Baroque-style gates from architect G.F. Bodley. Today the gardens are a major part of Powis Castle’s appeal.
Violet, Countess of Powis, by John Singer Sargent, 1912, at Powis Castle, Powys. ©NTPL/John Hammond
Last year we managed to acquire a charcoal sketch by John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) of Violet, Countess of Powis (1856-1929), for Powis Castle. The portrait is redolent of the grandeur and style of Edwardian upper-class life.
Nancy Astor by John Singer Sargent, at Cliveden, Buckinghamshire. ©NTPL/John Hammond
Sargent was hugely successful as a portrait painter, but in 1907 he effectively abandoned portraiture in oils. He was financially independent and preferred to focus on landscapes and other subjects.
Edith, Marchioness of Londonderry, by John Singer Sargent, 1913, at Mount Stewart, Co. Down. ©NTPL/John Hammond
However, he could not entirely escape the demands of his high society clientele, and in response to persistent demands he would agree to do a charcoal portrait, which he could finish in an hour or two.
Charles, seventh Marquess of Londonderry, by John Singer Sargent, 1910, at Mount Stewart, Co. Down. ©NTPL/John Hammond
More than 500 of these ‘mug shots’ (as he called them) are known. He originally charged twenty-one guineas for them, which rose to fifty around 1910 and later to a hundred.
Jenny, Lady Randolph Churchill, by John Singer Sargent, at Chartwell, Kent. ©NTPL/Derrick E. Witty
Celebrities captured by Sargent in this way include Winston Churchill, King Edward VII, Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon (later Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother), Henry James, Vaslav Nijinsky and W.B. Yeats.
The purchase of the portrait of the Countess of Powis was supported by a grant from the Art Fund.
Prize bull in a landscape, by Richard Whitford. This animal won third prize at Smithfield, London, in 1872. ©NTPL/Matthew Hollow
Earlier this year we bought a small herd of bulls at auction.
A prize bull in a landscape, by Richard Whitford. This animal won first prize at the Bath and West of England Show, Hereford, first prize at the West Midland Show, Oswestry, first prize at the Smithfield Club, London and first prize at the Bingley Hall, Birmingham, in 1876. The next year it again won first prize at the Bingley Hall, Birmingham. ©NTPL/Matthew Hollow
But it wasn’t at a livestock auction; it was at one of the paintings sales at Bonhams in London.
A prize bull in a barn, by Richard Whitford, 1875. This animal won second prize at the Smithfield Club, London, in 1874. ©NTPL/Matthew Hollow
The pictures show prize bulls that were bred at the home farm at Powis Castle, Powys, in the 1870s.
A prize bull in a landscape, by Richard Whitford, 1878. This animal won first prize at Smithfield, London, in both 1877 and 1878. ©NTPL/Matthew Hollow
The painter, Richard Whitford, specialised in such proud records of animal husbandry.
A prize bull by a gate, by Richard Whitford, 1878. This animal won second prize at the Bingley Hall, Birmingham, in 1877. ©NTPL/Matthew Hollow
The frame of each painting records the prizes won by that particular animal – which is just as well, because otherwise there would be little for a layman to distinguish one slablike bull from the next.
A prize bull in a landscape, by Richard Whitford. This animal won first prize at the Bath and West of England Show, Hereford, first prize at the West Midland Show at Oswestry, second prize at the Smithfield Club, London and second prize at the Bingley Hall, Birmingham, in 1876. ©NTPL/Matthew Hollow
The pictures have now been cleaned by conservator Melanie Caldwell and will soon be on display at Powis.
A prize bull in a landscape, by Richard Whitford. This animal won second prize at the Smithfield Club, London, in 1878. ©NTPL/Matthew Hollow
There was quite a lot of competion in the saleroom for this group of eight pictures. They came up as separate lots, and in once case we were outbid. So there is one bull out there on its own somewhere, bellowing disconsolately, separated from the herd.
