The Chatsworth House Trust charity has collaborated with the British and Irish Furniture Makers Online (BIFMO) on its Digital Research Programme, an annual outreach initiative.
The programme provides curatorial experience for Master's-level students, with two students invited to work collaboratively, and supported by a host institution's curator and a BIFMO project manager.
It aims to bring together students with different skillsets studying at different UK and USA-based universities to collaborate on a project, with the aim being for them to learn from each other while also drawing on the knowledge and experience of experts at the host institution and within the BIFMO network.
The Chatsworth Collections Team chose to focus on watercolour paintings depicting historic interior views of Chatsworth and other Devonshire properties.
This included a series produced in the 1820s by the artist William Henry Hunt for the 6th Duke of Devonshire. Hunt's views included interiors from Chatsworth, Chiswick, and Hardwick Hall.
Hunt wasn't the only artist to work in this genre, and other watercolour interiors by Hanslip Fletcher, F.S. Beaumont, and David Cox, also in the Devonshire Collections, formed part of the study.
These images provide incredibly detailed records of how rooms were presented at certain points in their history, and contain accurate visual representations of furniture, porcelain, textiles, and, to a lesser degree, sculpture and paintings. Happily, many of the items shown in these watercolours can be found in the Devonshire Collections today, presenting the opportunity to link physical items with these visual sources.
The two interiors chosen were the Library, as painted by William Henry Hunt c.1826 (shown above); and the Great Chamber, painted by Frederick Beaumont c. 1929 (shown below), selected as they are areas of the house open to visitors.
This allowed the team to support a closer look and deeper understanding of the objects and spaces in the charity's care, enabling present-day audiences to reflect on the relationship between past and present within a lived house.
Each room presented different challenges of interpretation: the Great Chamber is a room unaltered since its construction in the late 17th century. Its visual appearance has evolved through the objects displayed within. It is the Collection items – furniture and porcelain - which take centre stage in the painting of this room, providing it with a very different feel to how it looks today.
The Library, on the other hand, has experienced considerable architectural change, and the image in Hunt's watercolour is very different to what modern-day visitors see. Contextualising these changes was a key part of interpreting this watercolour.
The two students – Maeve and Courtney – used historical inventories, published sources, archival plans and photographs to create a link between the objects depicted in the paintings and the physical objects remaining in the Collection. However, their research went beyond merely identifying individual pieces; it considers the design, history and materiality of the objects, as well as their use and display within the space.
The Chatsworth House Trust charity hopes that this layering of information will encourage greater reflection on both the space and the pieces themselves, demonstrating their historical and cultural significance, while telling the story of how Chatsworth continues to evolve and change, just as it has over the last half-century.
View the project
View the results of the BIFMO project using the link below.
