Russborough House
Russborough House ( Irish Teach Russborough ) is an 18th century mansion located near the Blessington Lakes in County Wicklow , which has the longest facade in Ireland at 210 meters .
The building, now open to the public, was built by Richard Cassels in the Palladian style for the first Earl of Milltown. Today's interior furnishings and the art collection presented there are mainly from the last residents, Sir Alfred Lane Beit and Lady Clementine Beit.
history
Russborough House was built for Joseph Leeson between 1741 and 1751 . The son of a wealthy brewery owner and Member of the Irish Parliament from Dublin was later named first Earl of Milltown. Apart from a brief occupation by the British Army in 1800, the house remained in the Milltown family's possession for six generations. After the death of the last, childless Earl, almost all of the Milltown's furnishings and art collection went to the National Gallery of Ireland, where they are now on display in the Milltown Wing .
In 1915 Sir Edmund Turton, a nephew of the last Earl of Milltown, inherited the property. 16 years later, his family sold Russborough House for £ 9,000 to Denis and Maeb Daly, who lived there with their daughters and up to 18 employees until the early 1950s.
Sir Alfred Lane Beit and Lady Clementine Beit found out about Russborough House through an advertisement in Country Life magazine . They bought the property in 1952 because their previous residence in London did not have enough space for their extensive art and antiques collection. The couple belonged to the European " high society " and cultivated friendships with famous personalities such as Jackie Kennedy and Rex Harrison . Sir Alfred Lane Beit was a member of the British Parliament and worked, among other things, as a photographer and pilot.
Significant parts of the art collection come from the possession of Alfred Lane Beit's uncle, who was also called Alfred Beit . By diamond mines in South Africa , he had become one of the richest men in Europe.
The Beits opened the house for tours as early as 1978. In 1994 Sir Alfred Lane Beit died at the age of 91. Since the death of Lady Clementine Beit in 2005, the Alfred Beit Foundation has been responsible for Russborough House.
The exhibition
The exhibition is divided into two parts. The original Beits furnishings can be seen on the ground floor and first floor. In addition to paintings and sculptures, the couple also collected historical furniture, household items and carpets. The exhibits include Chinese vases from the 17th century, the bed of Sir Richard Arkwright (inventor of the Spinning Jenny ) and a microscope, which Marie Antoinette was presumably given to Marie Antoinette by the residents of Parma for her wedding. The oldest object is a stone statue from Burgundy of Maria Magdalena from the 16th century.
Part of the Beit family's extensive art collection can also be seen. These include two landscape paintings by Thomas Gainsborough , a depiction of animals by Jean-Baptiste Oudry and the four oil paintings "Morning", "Midday", "Evening" and "Night" specially made for Russborough House by Claude Joseph Vernet .
In 2011 a new exhibition dedicated to the life of the Beits was opened in the basement. In addition to three-dimensional black and white photographs from the 1920s and 1930s, cinematic travel documentaries and an extensive music collection, visits by famous personalities such as Jackie Kennedy and Mick Jagger are documented.
Theft, fire and auction
There have been a total of 4 art thefts in Russborough since the 1970s. In 1974 an IRA faction stole 16 paintings, including works by Vermeer and Goya , valued at several million Irish pounds. In 1986 Martin Cahill , also known as the "General", broke into Russborough. In 2001 and 2002, the former accomplice of Cahills, Martin Foley, stole several works of art, including Rubens' "Portrait of a Dominican Monk".
With one exception, all works were found again over the course of several years. However, the most valuable pieces have been hanging in the National Gallery of Ireland since the late 1980s due to safety concerns. In the so-called Beit Wing, for example, Gainsborough's “Madame Bacelli”, Hals' “Lute Player”, Goya's “Dona Antonia Zárate” and Vermeer's “ Letter Writer and Maid ” can be seen.
On February 7, 2010, a fire broke out in the west wing and destroyed, among other things, the entire roof of the wing. Due to the renovation work taking place at the time, there were neither works of art nor furniture in the wing. In 2012, the part of the building is to be completely renovated and made available to guests as accommodation.
A planned auction of nine paintings, u. a. by Peter Paul Rubens, David Teniers the Younger and Francesco Guardi at Christie's in summer 2015 was postponed after public protests in Ireland to allow the pictures to remain in Ireland. In this context it became known that there had already been sales of works of art in advance.
literature
- Seán O'Reilly: Irish Houses and Gardens. Aurum Press Limited, London 2008, p. 82ff.
- Desmond Guinness, William Ryan: Irish houses & castles. Viking Press, 1971, p. 333ff.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Fionn Davenport: Ireland. eBook Edition, Lonely Planet, Melbourne, Australia 2010, p. 168 ff.
- ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original from September 10, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original dated August 8, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ £ 2.5m Russborough House paintings theft. The Telegraph 2001 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1310502/2.5m-Russborough-House-paintings-theft.html
- ^ Davenport, Fionn: Ireland . lonely planet eBook Edition 2010, pp. 168f.
- ↑ Maireid Carey: An Artful Dodge . The Time Magazine 2002. https://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,901021216-397469,00.html
- ^ Matthew Hart: The Irish Game: A True Story of Crime and Art . Penguin, USA 2005.
- ^ "RTE News: No art damaged in Russborough. 8 February 2010 fire http://www.rte.ie/news/2010/0208/wicklow.html
- ^ Sale of Old Masters Sets Off to Outcry in Ireland , New York Times, June 2, 2015, accessed June 26, 2015
- ↑ Christie's Postpones Sale of Old Masters , New York Times, June 26, 2015, accessed June 26, 2015
Coordinates: 53 ° 8 ′ 28.5 ″ N , 6 ° 34 ′ 9.2 ″ W.