November 2008

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Waddesdon is the only house complete and open to the public in which the distinctive and influential goût Rothschild ofthe late 19th century can still be seen intact. On a hilltop over-looking the Vale of Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire, it was built between 1877 and 1883 by Baron Ferdinand Rothschild (1839-98) to show off his works of art and to entertain the fashionable world (Fig. 1).1 Famed for its French porcelain, furniture and textiles, British 18th-century portraits, 17th-century Northern genre paintings and princely treasures from the renaissance, the collection also encompasses important works on paper, from Old Master and decorative drawings to printed ephemera.

The house was bequeathed to the National Trust in 1957 by James de Rothschild. It is now managed by a Rothschild family trust under the chairmanship of Jacob, 4th Lord Rothschild. He is a collector in the family tradition and under his leadership the collections are being enlarged by remarkable acquisitions, from a silver service commissioned in the 1770s by George III for use in Hanover to Sarah Lucas’s over-life-size painted bronze and concrete sculpture of a horse and cart, Perceval (2006). This article announces the recent acquisition of four 18th-century paintings. Each transforms the collection while at the same time enriching themes that already run through it, from childhood games to diplomatic display and the theatre of state.

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