Petworth House and Park's collections
Explore the objects and works of art we care for at Petworth House and Park on the National Trust Collections website.
Two important seventeenth-century portraits, which were shortened 200 years ago to make more space on the wall, were restored to their full-length glory in 2019 and have returned to the Beauty Room for the first time in four years.
Painted by Swedish artist Michael Dahl (1659-1743) in the late 1690s, the recently restored portraits are of Rachel Russell, Duchess of Devonshire (1636-1723) and Mary Somerset, Duchess of Ormond (1664-1733) – two of the highest-ranking noblewomen in the court of William and Mary.
They are from a set of eight portraits commissioned for Petworth House at the end of the seventeenth century and displayed in what is today known as the Beauty Room.
All eight women were part of the close circle of cousins and friends of the 6th Duke and Duchess of Somerset, who rebuilt Petworth House into a Baroque palace.
Dahl painted seven of the portraits, but Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough (1660-1774) is by the court painter Sir Godfrey Kneller (1646-1723). Six were originally full-length portraits but the other two, hung above doorways, were always three-quarter length.
In the 1820s, the 3rd Earl of Egremont, who owned Petworth, wanted more space for new art celebrating the Battle of Waterloo, in which his sons had served. He ordered that six paintings of the so-called ‘Beauties’ be cut to three-quarter length, declaring: ‘I will cut off their legs, I do not want their petticoats.’
Fortunately, the Earl’s workers chose to loosely interpret his instructions and the cut pieces were not thrown away but roughly reattached and then folded and tacked up behind the paintings. Their survival was only discovered nearly two centuries later when National Trust curators took them down in 1995 for conservation work.
Take a look behind the scenes as the two 'beauties' are taken off the wall and assessed for restoration.
J. Dimond Conservation was given the painstaking task of carefully re-attaching the cut portions and restoring the paintings to their full glory. New wooden ‘stretchers’ supported the longer canvases from behind and the damaged areas of the paintings were restored.
- Tina Sitwell, former Paintings Conservation Advisor
The conservation experts had some challenges. One painting was cut cleanly but the other had jagged edges and both had holes where tacks had been used to hold the cut sections in place.
To re-align and seamlessly re-join the two cut pieces was a difficult and highly skilled process. Following this, the edges of the joins and holes were filled in and careful retouching took place to match the original surface.
The conservation work was funded by the National Trust with generous support from Philip Mould & Company.
After restoration, the two paintings were exhibited in Tate Britain’s British Baroque: Power and Illusion exhibition, before being showcased in the Work in Progress: Restoring ‘Petworth’s Beauties’ exhibition at Petworth House.
Explore the objects and works of art we care for at Petworth House and Park on the National Trust Collections website.
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