If you fancy helping to save an item of British history, now’s your chance.
The Strawberry Hill Trust is campaigning to save a portrait of Horace Walpole from vanishing into a private collection.
The painting of a child Walpole, entitled Portrait of Horace Walpole, later 4th Earl of Orford (1717 – 1797), is the earliest surviving oil portrait of the sitter, and a rare example of painter, William Hogarth’s early mature pictorial work.
Painted in 1727-8, it is also the earliest-known commissioned picture of an identifiable sitter by Hogarth, and his first-known portrait of a child.
Now, in order to put the painting of Walpole on public display in his home of Strawberry Hill, the Trust has launched an appeal in the hopes of acquiring the painting from a private collection.
Though the painting itself has been offered to the nation in lieu of death duties, it is valued at £230,000, which is more than the amount of tax due, so the museum is raising the funds to bridge the gap.
Though the National Heritage Memorial Fund has awarded the Trust £115,000 and the Art Fund has given £90,000, it has launched a crowdfunding campaign to raise the final £25,000 needed to purchase the painting.
Born in 1717, Walpole was educated at Eton and Cambridge before becoming a pivotal figure in 18th century literature, art and architecture.
As the third son of Britain’s first Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole, the younger Walpole went onto write the seminal Gothic text The Castle of Otranto – which was printed on his private printing press in the Strawberry Hill House grounds – and founded Strawberry Hill House itself.
He also left behind one of the nation’s greatest collections of art and antiquities, including portraits by Rubens, Van Dyck and Hans Holbein, furniture by Sèvres and Boulle, a lock of Mary Tudor’s hair and a carved Roman eagle from the first century AD.
Given the international interest in both Walpole and Hogarth, it is highly likely that unless purchased by Strawberry Hill, this painting could be sold overseas rather than be publicly displayed - as is the case with his early work, much of which is now in American museums or private collections.
“The value of this painting lies in the fact that it allows us to celebrate Walpole and Hogarth at the same time, their contributions to the 18th-century British art world and their relationship,” said Strawberry Hill’s director, Derek Purnell.
“Both Walpole and Hogarth, in different ways, challenged the prevailing 18th-century classical ideal in art and played a defining role in shaping an authentically English school of painting and architecture, with their ideas having a considerable impact on subsequent generations. That is why we are so keen that this work can find a new home in Walpole’s treasured home, Strawberry Hill.”
Find out more about the crowdfunding campaign here.
