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Tag Archives: Horace Walpole
what’s cookin’
…One of the chief concerns of a fashionable lord was to keep a good table, and the key to a good table was a French cook. The cartoon shows the Duke of Newcastle remonstrating with his famous chef, Cloue: “Oh … Continue reading
adam : jacobite gardens
Robert Adam, the greatest architect of eighteenth-century England, spent as much care on the interiors and furnishings as on the outside walls of the buildings he designed. His sense of classical elegance was shaped in Italy by his study of … Continue reading
kent: idyllic ideals
William Kent was architect of both houses and landscapes. He was consulted, according to Horace Walpole, not only for furniture but “for plates, for a barge, for a cradle.” Of his gardens Walpole said: “Mahomet imagined an Elysium, Kent created … Continue reading
Posted in Art History/Antiquity/Anthropology, Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion
Tagged Andrea Palladio, Chiswick House, Horace Walpole, John Talman, Joseph Losey, Lord Burlington, Madame Pickwick, madame pickwick art blog, Martin Beek painter, The Servant 1963, Timothy Mowl, William Kent Architect, William talman architect
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pink
Robert Adam’s triumph, the most exquisite room in all England, is the Pink Room at Osterley Park in Middlesex. The tapestries were woven to Adam’s order by Jacques Neilson, director of the Gobelin works in Paris. On the walls, large … Continue reading
Posted in Art History/Antiquity/Anthropology, Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion
Tagged Gobelin works Paris, Horace Walpole, Jacques Neilson Gobelin works Paris, Madame Pickwick, madame pickwick art blog, Maurice Jacques flower painter, Osterley Park Middlesex, Robert Adam Architect, Robert Adam Osterley Park
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country living: size and surprise
The noble houses of eighteenth century England… …To most visitors it is a strange unreal world that opens before their eyes, and questions crowd in. Are the 365 rooms at Knole in Kent really necessary even for a duke? Two … Continue reading
Posted in Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion
Tagged Bridgeman English landscape gardener, Capability Brown, Duchess of Bedford, Horace Walpole, Jan Siberechts Dutch Artist, Kent English Landscape gardener, madame de Pompadour, madame pickwick art blog, Marquess of Rockingham, Mylord of Exeter, Pickwick, Sir Robert Walpole, Woburn Abbey Chinese Dairy, Woburn Estate England
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the great estates: country life
The noble houses of eighteenth-century England… …The great age of building came to France in the sixteenth century, the time when many of the fabulous chateaux of the Loire were built, creating a tradition of palatial architecture which, modified and … Continue reading
Posted in Art History/Antiquity/Anthropology, Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion
Tagged Cholmondeley Family, Christopher Wren, England Hanoverian kings, Georgian England, Horace Walpole, Houghton Hall England, Inigo Jones, John Wootton painter, Madame Pickwick, madame pickwick art blog, Robert Walpole, Sir Robert Walpole, the Four Georges, William Hogarth
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autumn leaves: lonely in lichfield
She was one of Josiah Wedgwood’s friends. Part of what certainly had to be the most brilliant group in England in the eighteenth-century, and quite possibly the most eccentric. Some are forgotten today like Anna Seward, and she was certainly … Continue reading
enlightenment by design: build a better world?
The Enlightenment. This is our tradition. Our world view. The liberal, rational, humanitarian way of thought that have persisted since Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, the French Revolution and had earlier seeds in the likes of Spinoza, among others. It … Continue reading
Posted in Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion, Modern Arts/Craft
Tagged Adam Smith, Arthur Gobineau, Ben Grasso, Friedrich Nietzsche, giovanni battista vico, Herder linguist, Horace Walpole, John Maynard Keynes, Lyonel Feininger, Madame Pickwick, madame pickwick art blog, Marquis de Sade, Max Horkheimer, Paul Gauguin, Theodor Adorno, Voltaire
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nature abhors a straight line
England’s original contribution to garden art is the landscape park. William Kent was among the first to see that “all nature is a garden.” and his famous dictum that ” nature abhors a straight line.” Interesting in light of linear … Continue reading
POMPEII: Adam and Adamesque
When Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 A.D. , the ensuing earthquake and volcanic ash buried the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum until their rediscovery in the eighteenth century. When the ruins came to light, they caused a revolution in taste-stripping … Continue reading
Posted in Art History/Antiquity/Anthropology, Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion, Miscellaneous, Visual Art/Sculpture/etc.
Tagged Charles Greville, Edith Piaf, Emma Hamilton, Giambattista Piranesi, Horace Walpole, James Adam architect, Jean Francois Chalgrin Architect, Jean Racine, Johann Joachim Winckelmann, Joseph Addison, Josiah Wedgwood, Karl Weber Pompeii, Queen Maria Carolina of Naples, Robert Adam Architect, Sir William Hamilton, Syon House, William Beckford
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