Manuscript, in a single hand, of a collection of descriptions of residences of English nobility. The author focuses on descriptions of the views from each seat and the landscape in which the house is situated; occasionally he also describes the architecture and furnishings of the houses and provides anecdotes about the owners. He calls Winander Meer in Westmoreland "the largest water of the kind in England," and notes its picturesque promontories and shrub-decorated shores. At Raby Castle in North Riding, Yorkshire, the seat of the Earl of Darlington, he praises the Gothic taste of the windows; provides the dimensions of the "rendezvous apartment"; and explains how the dog-kennel, "rising out of a wood," beautifies the scene. He also speaks approvingly of Sir James Lowther's project in Cumberland of "building a town to consist of 300 houses, for the use of such of his Domesticks, and other people as are married," which he calls "a most incomparable method of promoting population."
Description:
In English., Alphabetical table of contents at beginning of manuscript., At end of manuscript: "The following table of Rooms in the Noblemen & Gentlemen's Seats mentioned in this Vol[u]me do not give the exact proportion of any whole house ... .", Title from title page., Bookplate of Philip Shirley., Bookplate of Ettington Manuscript Library. Written in ink in center: No. 62., Steel engraving pasted on preliminary leaf, opposite clipping with description: Ickworth House near Bury St. Edmunds : the seat of the most noble the Marquess of Bristol / engd. on steel by Alfred Adlard. 50 Dorset Street, Salisbury Square., and Binding: quarter calf over marbled boards. Printed on spine: Noblemens Seats.
Subject (Geographic):
England., England, and Great Britain
Subject (Name):
Young, Arthur, 1741-1820.
Subject (Topic):
Architecture, Domestic, Gentry, Homes and haunts, Nobility, Social life and customs, Travelers' writings, English, and Description and travel
A three-quarter length portrait of Anne, Countess of Sunderland, with head turned and slightly tilted to left, looking to front, her left arm resting on chair arm and right hand on her lap. She wears a low-cut voluminous satin gown with shawl and pearls and her hair is in ringlets. There a curtain behind and vase on a stand to her right
Description:
Title from a published engraving. and Plate from: Court beauties of the reign of Charles II. London, 1872.
Publisher:
publisher not identified
Subject (Geographic):
Great Britain.
Subject (Name):
Sunderland, Anne Digby Spencer, Countess of, -1715,
The writer Lady Louisa Stuart (1757-1851) was the daughter of George III’s prime minister Lord Bute. She is shown in a cluttered interior seated in an upholstered armchair at small table desk. She leans in to closely to read an open book that she holds in her hands. Lady Louisa Stuart’s manuscript notes on John Heneage Jesse's George Selwyn and his Contemporaries,” 1843-1844 sparked W.S. Lewis’s interest in the eighteenth century
Alternative Title:
Portrait of Lady Louisa Stuart, in an interior, reading book
Description:
Title devised by curator. and Title from 2005 Christie's appraisal: Portrait of Lady Louisa Stuart (1757-1851), in an interior, reading book
