The house was designed between 1791 and 1797, by esteemed Scottish architect James Playfair (1755-1794), who was championed for his innovative designs in the Neoclassical tradition. Sir John Soane (1753-1837), who was also famed for his Neoclassical designs, assisted in the final phase of the build following Playfair's death in 1794.

Having been a spectacular home for residents such as Charles Gordon of Buthlaw and Cairness (1749-1796), who commissioned it to be built, Major Thomas Gordon (1788-1841), a friend of Lord Byron, to the Gordon family who sold the estate to the Countess of Southesk (1893-1945), in 1937 (granddaughter of Edward VII), the house fell into disrepair until 2001. The new owners who were both knowledgeable, as well as passionate about collecting, embarked on the enormous task of restoring the house and grounds. They carefully curated each interior with important art works, furniture, decoration, lighting and textiles, that would bring the house back to its former glory.

This included the library, designed as an Etruscan room, with its colours derived from ancient painted terracotta vases, to the Egyptian Room featuring hieroglyphic symbols, which was believed to be one of the earliest surviving rooms of its kind in the world.

The success of this exceptional restoration was marked by the winning of the Georgian Group Architectural Awards prize for the best Georgian country house in Britain in 2009. The Georgian group commented: “From being a moribund building at risk, riddled with dry rot, Cairness is now a magnificent private home.” The prize was awarded by the Duke of Gloucester in November of the same year. The sensitive reconstruction of the house both inside and out and the painstaking research into the works that were to adorn each room, can be witnessed across the collection and it these works that we are excited to present for sale.

Among a range of important paintings in the sale is Lot 201, a portrait of H.R.H. Prince Frederick Augustus, Duke of York (1763-182), who commissioned the work himself directly from the celebrated English portrait painter Sir Thomas Lawrence, P.R.A. (1769-1830). The Duke was the second and favourite son of King George III and Queen Charlotte and brother and lifelong close companion of his elder brother, the Prince of Wales, later Prince Regent and subsequently King George IV. From an early age he was chosen for a military career. In 1793 he was promoted to General and sent to Flanders in command of the British contingent of Prince Josias of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld’s army during the Flanders campaign of the French Revolutionary Wars. In 1799 he again received a field command, when he was appointed supreme commander of the Anglo-Russian invasion of Holland. As Commander-in-Chief he pushed through a programme of reform responsible for the effectiveness of the British forces serving in the Peninsula War. In the opinion of Sir John Fortescue (1859-1933), Frederick did “more for the army than any one man has done for it in the whole of its history.”

The painter commissioned for the artwork, Sir Thomas Lawrence, was one of the most popular portraitists of his generation and was called on regularly to paint portraits of the Royal family in England and Europe, as well as further afield, with Popes and Tsars sitting for him. He was made Principal Painter to George III in 1792 after Sir Joshua Reynolds’s death. After 1814 he received several commissions by Prince Frederick’s brother, George IV, culminating in The Waterloo Chamber at Windsor Castle (an imposing room depicting a celebration of the defeat of the French and the end of the Napoleonic wars in the Battle of Waterloo) and he was knighted in 1815. Prior to the present portrait, Lawrence had previously been commissioned by the Duke for two formal portraits and executed a half-length and a full-length portrait, which were exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1814 and 1816. The portrait in the sale is a more informal image of the Duke of York, depicting him in private dress wearing the ‘Star of the Garter’ pinned on a black frock coat. The Duke took particular pride in being a member of the ‘Most Honourable Order of the Bath’, a British order of chivalry founded by King George I and despite the absence of his military decorations in the portrait, the order’s sash is seen in the flash of bright red above his lapel, a focal point in the composition. The work was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1822 (no. 73) and the popular acclaim it received resulted in an engraving by George Thomas Doo (1824).

Another important portrait in the sale is by Royal Academician Francis Cotes (1726-70), one of the most fashionable portrait painters in London during the third-quarter of the 18th century. His main rivals were Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-92) and Allan Ramsay (1713-84), both of whom influenced his work. At the 1764 exhibition of the Society of Artists, Cotes’ contribution was described favourably to the detriment of Reynolds in the Public Advertiser: ‘His portraits may justly vie with those of Reynolds, and greatly to his honour be it said, he generally preserves a correctness in his pictures, which the latter master too often neglects’ (Winter, p. 244).

Initially a pastellist, between 1760 and 1768, he exhibited forty-eight pictures at the Society of Artists’ annual exhibitions where he was also a Director. The portrait in the sale encapsulates Grace Colhoun née Parsons (1742-1803), the daughter of Edward Parson, a landowner in Little Parndon, Essex and British Monsterrat. In 1766 she married the Norfolk landowner William Colhoun of Wretham, Thorpe and Great Hockham, whose family also held significant interests in the West Indies. In his political career Colhourn served as a Member of Parliament for Bedford (1784- 1802). Lot 197 offers a portrait commissioned soon after their marriage, the newly wed Mrs. William Colhoun is adorned in a lilac wrapping gown accented by a green and gold Indian calico sash and cloak. She exudes a captivating aura and is portrayed leaning on a stone pedestal crowned by an ornamental urn. Her gentle inclination, resting her head upon her hand, evokes a sense of contemplative grace, while delicately holding her skirt with the other hand, accentuates her figure against an Arcadian backdrop of verdant trees at sunset.

An equally significant painting in the sale, Lot 199, is a portrait of Charles Hamilton, 5th Earl of Haddington (1650-85), known as Lord Binning until he inherited his father’s titles in 1669. Whilst not politically active, he allied himself to the Duke of Hamilton in his support of the Duke of Lauderdale in the early stages of the latter’s Scottish policy, in which Lauderdale adopted a moderate attitude towards the Presbyterians. In 1674, the 5th Earl married Lady Margaret Leslie, eldest daughter of John Leslie, 1st Duke of Rothes, Lord Chancellor of Scotland. She was heiress to her father’s Earldom of Rothes, but not his Dukedom. In order to prevent the Rothes title becoming extinct the marriage terms determined that any first-born son was to assume the surname Leslie and be heir to the Earldom of Rothes, and any second- born would be heir to the Earldom of Haddington. The painting is the work of Jacob Huysmans (1630-1696), a Flemish painter born in Antwerp around 1633, who was renowned for his portraiture in England during the late seventeenth century. A Roman Catholic who captured much of the spirit of the Restoration court, Huysmans often gave his portraits an elaborate Baroque flourish and the artist greatly benefited from the patronage of his co-religionist, Catherine of Braganza (1638-1705), becoming a rival of the more sombre Dutch artist Sir Peter Lely (1618-1680). This studio artwork conforms to a portrait type employed by Jacob Huysman and his studio in the mid 1670s, where the sitter is portrayed with pallid white hands, which are typical of the artist. In three-quarter-length they are depicted in armour, with a brightly coloured sash, while being framed by the same rocky outcrop.

Lot 198 is an oil portrait by the British artist William Etty (1787-1849), the only important British painter before the 20th century to have dedicated his career to painting the nude and semi-nude, is another exciting addition to the sale. A very successful artist, despite press criticism of his work being indecent, Etty was elected an associate of The Royal Academy (ARA) in 1824 and a full academician (RA) in 1828. He held a one-man exhibition at the Society of Arts in 1849, where he exhibited 133 of his pictures.

The painting in the sale portrays the highly successful actor and theatre manager William Charles Macready (1793-1873), famous for his Shakespearian roles and in this case, the role of Hamlet, which he reprised on many occasions, from his first performance at aged 18 in in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1811, Bath in 1814, London’s Covent Garden in 1821, to Paris in 1827 and 1844 and later in Edinburgh where he was famously hissed by his American counterpart, Edwin Forrest. This sparked a rivalry which came to symbolise Anglo-American social and class tensions that climaxed in the explosive ‘Macready Riots’ of 1849 at Astor Place, New York. Given the centrality of Macready’s Hamlet to the international controversy, it was natural that the actor should want to portray himself in the painting confidently embodying the role. Macready and Etty met when travelling in Italy in the 1820s and remained close friends after their chance encounter. Correspondence between the pair, now held in the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington D.C. includes letters from Etty to Macready dated 1838-1843, congratulating him on his performances in King Lear, Comus and Much Ado About Nothing.

Elsewhere in the sale, Lot 209 is a historical Flemish tapestry depicting the Coronation of Alexander the Great (356-323 BC), who single-handedly changed the nature of the ancient world in little more than a decade. His successes in battle led to his crowning as 'the great king' of Persia at the age of 25. The tapestry derives in part from designs by Peter Paul Rubens of 1616. The woven scene features architectural framework and stairs leading up to a kneeling figure awaiting his crowning, with armies bearing standards. It was owned by the Grant family of Monymusk House, Inverurie, Aberdeenshire.

Among a selection of sculpture, Lot 263 is a carved marble bust of the Anglo-Irish statesman, diplomat and politician Robert Stewart, 2nd Marquess of Londonderry (1769-1822), who commissioned Sir Francis Chantrey (1781-1841), one of England's foremost sculptors to make his bust for the price of 150 guineas. Chantry was a well-respected sculptor who became a Royal Academician in 1818, received honorary degrees from Cambridge and Oxford, became a Fellow of the Royal Society and was finally knighted in 1835. He completed the bust of Lord Castlereagh in 1828 and during its creation Harriet Arbuthnot, the social diarist and close friend of Castlereagh visited Chantrey’s studio and on viewing it she wrote: “it will be wonderfully like and has just the beautiful expression of his countenance when he speaks.” On its completion it was exhibited at the Royal Academy, the first exhibition of one of Chantry’s portraits of prominent Tory politicians “in the grand style”. Following Castlereagh’s death in 1822, Chantrey went on to produce other versions of the portrait bust for friends and admirers of the late politician and in 1828, George IV commissioned a version for his ‘Grand Corridor’ at Windsor Castle.

Dating from 1810, Lot 235 is a pair of ebonised plaster female torchère figures depicting the ‘vestal virgin’ are by the sculptor Henry Hopper (1767-1844), who exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1799 to 1834. He produced a variety of plaster and terracotta figures after the Antique, which were designed to support candelabra, lamps and clocks, such as the example in the sale. The pattern of the ‘vestal virgin’ used for these particular torchère figures was identified with the Egyptian style, as popularised by the Anglo-Dutch art collector,  author, philosopher and connoisseur, Thomas Hope (1769–1831) and the interiors at his famous home in Duchess Street, London.

Joe Robinson, Head of House Sales and Private Collections at Dreweatts, said: “It is an honour to present such a special collection from one of the most important houses in the history of Neoclassicism in Scotland. It is rare for a collection to come to market that has been so thoughtfully curated, with such impressive academic vision and decorative flare. The sale offers a fascinating insight into the art of collecting and demonstrates the dedication to quality and provenance that the owners put into obtaining the works.”

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Auction Details

Town and Country: The Collections from Cairness House and a Historic Townhouse on Wimpole Street

Wednesday 31 January, 10.30am GMT
Donnington Priory, Newbury, Berkshire RG14 2JE

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