The Crimson-figured Room has its walls painted, by Pellegrini, with a series of incidents of the Trojan war: these are—the Rape of Helen, Achilles in disguise amidst the daughters of Lycomedes, King of Scyros, and Ulysses in search of him, Ajax and Ulysses contending for the armour of Achilles, Troy in flames, and Æneas bearing on his shoulders Anchises from the burning city.
The Blue Drawing-room, the Green Damask Room, the Yellow Bed-chamber, the Silver Bed-room, the Blue Silk Bed-room, and, indeed, all the remaining apartments, need no further remark than that they are, in their furnishing and appointments, all that the most fastidious taste could desire them to be.
The pictures that so lavishly adorn Castle Howard have been long renowned. The collection contains some of the very finest examples of the great old masters to be found in Europe. The best of them once formed part of the famous Orleans Gallery, and were acquired by the Earl of Carlisle when the French Revolution of 1789 caused their distribution.
To name all the works in this collection would occupy more space than we can spare: chief among them all is “The Three Marys,” by Annibale Carracci; it suffices to name it as one of the world’s wonders in Art. And also “The Adoration of the Wise Men,” by Mabuse, the chef-d’œuvre of the master. Other grand examples are by Titian, Correggio, Domenichino, Guercino, Carlo Maratti, Giorgione, Primaticcio, Julio Romano, Tintoretto, Paolo Veronese, Velasquez, Cuyp, Claude, Ruysdael, Vandyke, Rubens, Wouvermans, Breughel, Berghem, Jansen, Holbein, Huysman, Mabuse, Van der Velde, Teniers, and Canaletti. Of Canaletti there are no fewer than forty-five examples—his best productions in his best time—scattered throughout the corridors and rooms, with famous specimens of Reynolds and Lawrence, and family portraits by other artists; notably those of Jackson, an artist who, from his obscure boyhood in Yorkshire, was encouraged and upheld by the House of Carlisle.
The history of the dispersion of the Orleans Gallery deserves record here. When the French prince, Philippe of Orleans, surnamed Égalité, wanted a sum of money to carry out his political projects, he sold his entire gallery of pictures (in 1792) for a comparatively insignificant amount: those of the Italian and French schools to a banker of Brussels, and those of the Flemish, Dutch, and German schools to an Englishman, Mr. T. M. Slade. The Italian and French pictures subsequently passed into the hands of a French gentleman, M. Laborde de Mèreville, who, being compelled to quit his country during the Revolution, caused his pictures to be brought to London, and ultimately sold them to Mr. Jeremiah Harman, a wealthy merchant. “Thus matters stood,” says Dr. Waagen, in his “Treasures of Art in Great Britain,” “till the year 1798, when Mr. Bryan”—the well-known picture-buyer, and author of the “Dictionary of Painters and Engravers,” a standard book of reference—“prevailed on the late Duke of Bridgewater, Earl Gower, afterwards Marquis of Stafford, and the Earl of Carlisle, to purchase this splendid collection for the sum of £43,000, and thus to secure it for ever to England.”
The Conservatories are remarkably fine, and well ordered with all the floral treasures of the world, while the collection of hardy herbaceous plants congregated at Castle Howard, numbering upwards of six hundred species, is unmatched elsewhere.
The Garden.
Of the Gardens we give two engravings: the one chiefly to show a charming fountain, a work of great merit, the production of the sculptor Thomas; the other to convey an idea of the peculiar and very beautiful character of the grounds and their adornments—the terrace walks, the lake, the summer-house (Temple of Diana), and the Mausoleum, environed by umbrageous woods; here and there vases judiciously interspersed with memorial pillars, commemorating some striking event or some renowned benefactor of the race of the Howards.