Day 220 - Kirtlington Park dining room



October 23, 2020

Gallery 511 is a very large period room into which I suspect my whole apartment could fit with room to spare. Installed in 1748, it comes from Kirtlington Park, a manor in Oxfordshire owned by Sir James Dashwood, a name that strikes me as right out of Jane Austen or just about any other 18th or 19th century English author.  The room is so big that I think it must be a salon, but it turns out to be a dining room, built at a time, I read, when very few homes had separate dining rooms. It's no problem to imagine 50 people seated at the dining room table, which must have been grand indeed. 


The chief decorative feature of the room is its stucco ornamentation. Native craftsmen learned this art, a placard says, from their Italian counterparts working in England.  Stucco wreaths and garlands frame two large oval mirrors set in one of the long walls of the rectangular room. (You can see my reflection, appropriately masked, in the photo of one of these mirrors. ) These motifs, accompanied by a classical head surrounded by leaves and by some pudgy putti, also appear on the fireplace on the opposite wall.  Stucco work defines two large panels on the short walls, within one of which a large standing portrait of Sir James has been hung.  The stucco covers the entire ceiling as well. I note that the designs, while varied, are also highly symmetrical: the same design frames the two mirrors, another design appears on both the right and left of one of the short-wall central panels, and a third design is found on both sides of the fireplace. The symmetry makes the otherwise-busy room much more visually restful. So, I imagine, does the color scheme, although the lighting is so dim that I can only guess that the walls are a pale yellow or a yellowish beige, against which the ivory-toned stucco is set.


The signage doesn't note how the Met acquired this room. Did the Dashwoods encounter hard times and sell off their property to a wealthy American?

 

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