The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Volume 2Gwynn, Stephen Lucius
History
The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Volume 2
Gwynn, Stephen Lucius
Dilke, Charles Wentworth, Sir, 1843-1911; Great Britain -- Politics and government -- 19th century
At the time when Horace Walpole's collection at Strawberry Hill was
sold, Sir Charles's grandfather had stayed at Twickenham, and had
brought away many purchases, which peopled the Red and Green
Drawing-rooms on the next landing. There was a little group of
miniatures in which the 'Beautiful Gunnings' and a charming 'Miss
Temple' figured; in another group, miniatures of Addison, of Mme. Le
Brun, of Molière, came from Lady Morgan, whose pen of bog-oak and gold,
a gift to her from the Irish people, hung in Sir Charles's own study.
The best of the miniatures were those by Peter Oliver, and portrayed
Frederick of Bohemia, Elector Palatine, and his wife Elizabeth, Princess
Royal of England, afterwards married to Lord Craven; while the finest of
all was 'a son of Sir Kenelm Digby, 1632.' It was one of 'several
others' which Walpole 'purchased at a great price,' a purchase which was
thus chronicled 'by Mason (Junius) in a letter to Walpole: 'I
congratulate you on the new miniatures, though I know one day they will
become Court property and dangle under the crimson-coloured shop-glasses
of our gracious Queen Charlotte.' The set were all brought together for
the first time since 1842 at the Burlington Fine Arts Club Exhibition.
In these two drawing-rooms, among the medley of enamelled and inlaid
tables, royal gifts and collectors' purchases, pictures by Cranach,
Mabuse, Van Goyen, Mignard, and many more, some special objects stood
out. These were a beautiful Madonna by Memling, on a circular panel,
from Lord Northwick's collection; the Strawberry Hill marble version of
the famous Bargello relief by Donatello, of the head of the infant St.
John the Baptist; and a portrait ascribed to Cornelius Jansen, which,
owing to the fleurs-de-lis on the chair, passed by the name of 'the
Duchess,' a portly lady of some dignity, with beautiful white hands and
tapering fingers. Lady Dilke's researches, however, placed the lady as
Anne Dujardin, an innkeeper of Lyons. The painter, young Karl Dujardin,
unable to pay his reckoning, had settled it by marrying his hostess and
taking her to Amsterdam, and the fleurs-de-lis on the chair explained
that the lady was of French extraction. A Flemish head of Margaret of
Austria, Regent of the Netherlands, had come from the Gwydyr Collection.
She was much exhibited, but her main interest was due to Sir Charles's
intense admiration for the governing capacity and the overshadowed life
of the woman. He made two pilgrimages to the church at Brou, near
Bourg-en-Bresse, where her sculptured face, closely resembling that of
the portrait, looks out from tomb and windows, as she lies side by side
with Philibert le Beau, the husband of her love and of her youth, in the
magnificent shrine she built for him.
Tapestry hangings divided the rooms from each other, and in many cases
only heavy curtains divided them from the stairs.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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