“Horace Walpole’s Strawberry Hill” is on view through January 3 at the Yale Center for British Art.
“I am going to build a little Gothic castle at Strawberry Hill,” declared Horace Walpole in January 1750. An influential antiquarian and man of letters, Walpole (1717‱797) was one of the most important English collectors of the Eighteenth Century.
In 1747, he leased a modest house along the Thames in Twickenham, outside London, and over the next 50 years, Walpole expanded the grounds from five to 46 acres. He transformed the cottage into the first celebrated building designed in the Gothic Revival style.
Today, Walpole’s villa remains standing, but most of its former contents are scattered into other collections around the globe, having been sold off at auction in 1842 by Walpole’s heir, George Edward Waldegrave, the seventh Earl Waldegrave.
Walpole’s vast collection as it was formed and arranged at Strawberry Hill has never been the subject of a comprehensive critical study, until this exhibition at Yale.
The first major exhibition to evoke the breadth and significance of Walpole’s efforts, “Strawberry Hill” includes a rich variety of nearly 300 objects once owned by him, including rare books and manuscripts, antiquities, paintings, prints, drawings, furniture, ceramics, arms and armor, and curiosities. The exhibition will analyze the history and reception of Walpole’s collection and the ways in which he described and cataloged it in numerous publications and manuscripts.
The exhibition, which will travel to the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, in the spring, is timed at a critical moment in the history of Strawberry Hill. In 2004, the house was included in the World Monuments Fund (WMF) Watch List of 100 Most Endangered Sites. The WMF and the Strawberry Hill Trust, together with the Friends of Strawberry Hill, are in the midst of a campaign to conserve the structure and interiors. The house is scheduled to open to the public in late next summer.
While most of Walpole’s treasures were scattered across the globe, his vast collection of Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century painted and stained glass remained in the house. It was partly due to the fragility of its windows that the World Monuments Fund listed the house among the most endangered world heritage sites.
The first phase of restoration began in early 2008 with the removal, conservation and resetting of the glass by a small and dedicated group of conservators at Chapel Studio in Hertfordshire. Once nearly all the funding ($14.7 million) required for complete restoration was raised, major work began in November 2008 on the structure, interior and landscape of the house.
The center is at 1080 Chapel Street. For more information, www.yale.edu/ycba or 203-432-2800.
