Exploring another side of Petworth House - the National Gallery of the south.

Petworth House, Petworth, Saturday, January 9, to Sunday, March 6

CIVIL war, European tours and four art obsessives all contributed to what Petworth House’s curator Andrew Loukes describes as “our National Gallery in the south.”

Petworth House is probably best known for its influence on 19th century British artists including Turner and Constable.

But this exhibition is highlighting another dimension of the stately home’s collection many of which have rarely been displayed in public.

Included in the display are the return of Hans Holbein’s full-length painting of King Henry VIII, having been on loan to the Real Tudors exhibition in Paris, alongside works by Bosch, Titian, Teniers and Van Dyck.

“It’s a combination of paintings that have not been seen for a long time, or in some cases ever,” says Loukes, who began work on the exhibition as soon as Petworth’s celebration of Turner was launched last January.

“These are paintings that are generally on display in the house on loan from the resident family, but are now on display in a way that people have never seen them before, or will ever see again.”

The paintings were brought together by four collectors, mainly acquired from grand tours of Europe although in the case of the leading Parliamentarian 10th Earl Of Northumberland many were also picked up as spoils of the English Civil War.

As well as showing selections from Petworth’s extensive collection of 600 paintings, Remastered will also tell the story of the four masters of the house, alongside their portraits.

The best known of the four is the 3rd Earl Of Egremont, who acted as patron to many emerging British artists in the early 19th century.

But he was building on the work of three previous collectors – his father the 2nd Earl Of Egremont, who built up his collection through a series of Grand Tours, the 6th Duke Of Somerset who married into the Percy family and rebuilt Petworth into the mansion it is today, and the aforementioned 10th Earl Of Northumberland, Algernon Percy, who didn’t spend a lot of time in Petworth, but sent much of his collection to the house.

The 10th Earl was a patron of Anthony Van Dyck and a collector of Italian Renaissance pictures.

His influence brings a political significance to the collection.

“One of the paintings is originally from the collection of King Charles I,” says Loukes.

“We are trying to explain the story through the exhibition. The King’s collection was split apart during the Civil War. When the monarchy was restored royal officers were sent out to get it back.”

The 10th Earl managed to hold onto his spoils of war however – including much of the Duke Of Buckingham’s collection at York House.

“In the 1640s many of the pictures which were taken by the 10th Earl from York House would otherwise have been destroyed,” says Loukes. “They would have been seen as overtly Catholic images by the Parliamentarians. Instead the 10th Earl rescued a lot of paintings from certain destruction or sale abroad by army officers.”

One example is eight small paintings by Adam Elsheimer – of whose work only 50 paintings remain around the world.

These eight are among the paintings the house has taken the opportunity to restore and conserve, reframe, and relight as a result of the exhibition.

Loukes feels the context of the country house, which is giving over three state rooms to the exhibition, is important to an audience used to seeing pictures on display in a gallery.

“That is their real context and true surroundings,” he says. “Those of us in the modern era are used to seeing paintings in a certain space or light out of the country house context.”

It is the same way future British masters such as Turner and Constable would have seen them and been inspired in the days prior to publicly funded art spaces.

“There was no art school or exhibition space for British artists,” says Loukes, who points to the importance of the 3rd Earl in promoting British art by mixing his forefathers’ collection of old masters with what was then contemporary work.

“Artists in this country hadn’t really found their feet in how to deliver their product. Once they had learned and absorbed the influence of foreign artists they were able to improve themselves. They had to know someone like the 3rd Earl who owned these works as there was no National Gallery.”

In promoting and displaying British art the 3rd Earl was making his own statement.

“He bought into promoting British art as another arm of British achievement,” says Loukes.

“There was a patriotic side to showing modern British art alongside European work.”

The collection has other more modern tales to tell.

The Petworth art collection was one of the first to be accepted by the Government in lieu of inheritance tax in the 1950s after there was a danger of the collection being dispersed across the world to pay a hefty tax bill.

“The collection was so big the Government didn’t want to accept it all, so they got the National Gallery to advise them,” says Loukes.

“They took 200 works from the collection of 600. Some of the finest works were simply missed as the scholarship wasn’t so wide.”

One notable example was Andrea Del Sarto’s 16th century masterpiece Madonna And Child With Saint John And Three Angels, which takes pride of place in the new exhibition.

“It is now recognised as one of the great Renaissance treasures in the country,” says Loukes. “At the time it had been badly over-painted by a Victorian restorer.”

Its true worth was only discovered when the current Lord Egremont sent the painting off to be restored at the Courtauld Institute in the 1980s to be restored. The work took ten years, but revealed the true treasure beneath.

In terms of putting together the exhibition, Loukes describes it as “winkling out” the most significant and attractive images in the collection.

“Putting an exhibition together is very different from writing a book,” says Loukes. “You have to be mindful of the arrangements of the objects to deliver the maximum impact.”

The exhibition is largely chronological, with the first room devoted to early European paintings up to 1610.

The entrance hall is devoted to the collectors, with the remaining two rooms devoted to the 17th century, including artists such as Van Dyck and Peter Lely, and the 18th century favourites such as Bernardo Bellotto, as well as rarely seen artists in the British collection.

Loukes admits it is almost possible to match the paintings with the collector behind them.

“They all had their own take on the pictures they wanted to buy,” he says. “Inevitably they tended to buy the best and all four collectors had a pretty good idea of what they wanted.

“There was a definite sense of developing a Petworth collection from the time of the 10th Earl.”

Ironically it is the most recent collector whose choices are hardest to pinpoint.

“Unlike the other three collectors, who are quite well-documented, most of the 3rd Earl’s records were burned after he died in 1837 in a clear out of the family papers,” says Loukes.

“He had a particular taste for quirky, sinister, dark and narrative subjects.”

The Third Earl also thinned out some of the collection – in 1794 he sold more than 150 paintings which were originally owned by his father, including a Rembrandt and a Durer.

“Fortunately there have been relatively few sales of works of art from the collection since,” says Loukes – pointing only to a sale of pictures in the 1920s.

In that case one of the sold paintings, a young boy by 16th century Italian artist Bronzino, was bought back by the current Lord Egremont in 1968.

“Fortunately the majority of paintings have never been anywhere else,” says Loukes. “It is an art collection of great significance – the most important in the National Trust. We’re trying to do as much as we can to promote it.”

As for the future Loukes is looking back to the British collection for 2017.

“We don’t want to necessarily focus on Turner, but look at the golden age of British art,” he says, adding the exhibition may include other loans from the National Trust.

“There is a large amount of relatively unknown, but hugely significant paintings by 18th and 19th century artists. With the benefit of modern technology it is now possible to redisplay objects in such a way that was impossible when the original collectors acquired them.

“The intention is to keep them alive for future generations.”

Open 10.30am to 3pm, tickets £12. Call 0844 2491895 or visit www.nationaltrust.org.uk/petworth-house-and-park/ to book.

The four collectors

Algernon Percy, 10th Earl Of Northumberland (1602 – 1668)

ORIGINALLY a favourite of King Charles I, Percy was drawn to the side of the opposition when the Long Parliament began in 1640. He was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Sussex in 1660 following the restoration of Charles II. In 1668 Sir William Temple said of him to his son Joceline, 11th Earl Of Northumberland: “There was no man perhaps of any party but believed, honoured, and would have trusted him. Neither was this due to any chance of his birth, but, as all lasting reputation is, to those qualities which ran through the frame of his mind and the course of his life”.

He died aged 66 and is buried at Petworth.

Charles Seymour, 6th Duke Of Somerset (1662 – 1748)

HAVING inherited the ancient Percy seat through his wife Elizabeth (Joceline Percy’s sole heir), Seymour rebuilt Petworth House between 1688 and 1696 to the palatial form it is known today.

He supported William Of Orange in the Glorious Revolution of 1689, and became a favourite of Queen Anne, being made Master Of The Horse until being dismissed by her heir King George I in 1715. Known as “the proud duke” for his love of court ceremonial, he died aged 86 at Petworth and was buried in Salisbury Cathedral in the Seymour Chapel.

Charles Wyndham, 2nd Earl Of Egremont (1710 – 1763)

The grandson of Charles Seymour, Wyndham served as a member of Parliament for 16 years, representing Bridgwater, Appleby and Taunton. He was appointed Secretary Of State for the Southern Department in 1761, and was Lord Lieutenant of Sussex in the last year of his life.

Contemporary Horace Walpole damned him by saying he had neither knowledge of business, nor the smallest share of parliamentary abilities, adding “Everybody knew he would die suddenly, he used no exercise, and could not be kept from eating, without which prodigious bleedings did not suffice. A day or two before he died he said ‘Well, I have but three turtle-dinners to come, and if I survive them I shall be immortal’.”

George Wyndham, 3rd Earl Of Egremont (1751 – 1837)

GEORGE Wyndham is most closely associated as a patron of the arts, having hosted Turner, Constable, C R Leslie, George Romney and John Flaxman at Petworth.

He played a limited role in politics, although he did sponsor the Petworth Emigration Scheme, sending 1,800 people from Sussex to Upper Canada to combat overpopulation.

He reputedly maintained 15 mistresses, fathering more than 40 illegitimate children at Petworth.