![Sample our Humanities journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5939/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Humanities.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
In 1835 Nathan Rothschild purchased Gunnersbury Park. Set in only 75 acres, this Regency villa in Ealing, just outside London, was the antithesis of a landed estate. The house remained in the family until 1925. This article argues that the architecture, interior decoration, garden and social use of Gunnersbury Park, although consonant with villa tradition, were shaped by the choices of this Jewish mercantile family, instrumental in Rothschild self-fashioning and their pursuit of acceptance by the social elite. As Gunnersbury evolved to serve the changing needs of successive generations, it invited the outside world in, redefining the family through new interests in sport, the garden and collecting, all nurtured there. Remarkably this acculturation took place within, not outside the Jewish context, the ties of family and religion remaining vital influences. In tracing this social rite of passage, it emerges that by the twentieth century the Rothschilds, now enmeshed in upper-class society, defined themselves not simply as Jews but as British Jews. Gunnersbury Park, neglected in Rothschild historiography, facilitated this transformation while remaining a family home of lasting resonance for all who had known it.
Acknowledgements
This article could not have been written without the help of Melanie Aspey, Justin Cavernelis-Frost and Natalie Attwood at The Rothschild Archive. I thank them all. I must also thank Helen Jacobsen who supervised my initial research, Vanda Foster and Julia Tubman, curators past and present at Gunnersbury Park Museum, Val Bott, Lynda McLeod at the Christie’s Archive, Michael Hall, curator at Exbury House, Alastair Laing and the peer reviewers for their insightful comments. I am also grateful to Abigail Green, David Rechter, Oliver Cox and Juliet Carey for giving me the opportunity to participate in the Jewish Country House conference in March 2018 and to the journal editors, Glenda Abramson and Angelina Palmen.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Dr Diana Davis specializes in the interface between collectors, dealers and the art market in the nineteenth century. Her book, The Tastemakers: British Dealers and the Anglo-Gallic Interior, 1785–1865, will be published by the Getty Research Institute in Spring 2020. She is on the council of the French Porcelain Society and co-edits their journal, one of the leading peer-reviewed publications on European ceramics.
Notes
1 Hansard, Parliamentary Debates, 3rd series, lxxxvi, 1846, 86–87. Ireland, Plutocrats, 154.
2 The Rothschild Archive, London (henceforth RAL): 000/848/34, sales particulars.
3 Ackerman, The Villa, 9. Notable exceptions included Lord Burlington at Chiswick House.
5 Prévost-Marcilhacy, Les Rothschild bâtisseurs, 52, 354–5.
6 Hall, “Baron Lionel.”
7 Ireland, Plutocrats, 178.
8 Collett-White, Gunnersbury Park; Bott and Wisdom, Gunnersbury Park.
9 Weintraub, Charlotte and Lionel; Ireland, Plutocrats.
10 Bott and Wisdom, Gunnersbury Park, 9–21; Chiswick Local Studies Library: Particulars, &c. Gunnersbury House (Skinner & Co, 7 May 1787).
11 Bott and Wisdom, Gunnersbury Park, 12–15.
12 Bott and Wisdom, Gunnersbury Park, 18.
13 Chiswick Local Studies Library: Particulars, &c. Gunnersbury House (Skinner & Co, 7 May 1787).
14 British Library: Add. Ms. 33135, “An Inventory of the things found at Gunnersbury House in the Cabinet Nov 7th 1786”.
15 Copland designed military barracks, profiting from the Napoleonic Wars. Other work included the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst and redeveloping the Albany into residential apartments.
16 Mandler, The Fall and Rise, 12.
17 Ireland, Plutocrats, 56.
18 I thank Melanie Aspey for this information.
19 RAL: 000/848/34, sales particulars.
20 Ziegler, The Sixth Great Power, 49; Ireland, Plutocrats, 154.
21 Endelman, The Jews of Georgian England, 97–104.
22 Gray and Aspey, “Nathan Mayer Rothschild.”
23 Collett-White, Gunnersbury Park, 15.
24 Bott and Wisdom, Gunnersbury Park, 30; Aspey, “Mrs Rothschild,” 58.
25 Finberg, “Jewish Residents,” 129–35; Endelman, The Jews of Georgian England, 126–7; Brown, “Anglo-Jewish Country Houses,” 25–9, 34–35.
29 RAL: RFamC/21, 7 September 1863.
30 RAL: RFamC/4/161, 22 October 1861.
31 Mordaunt-Crook, The Rise, 45.
32 Arnold, “The Country House,” 9–10.
33 RAL: RFamPL/3/2, “Ground Plan … as proposed to be altered”, 2 September 1835; rear elevation, 11 August 1835.
34 RAL: RFamC/4/63, 21 September 1864.
35 Howard in Arnold, The Georgian Villa, 4–5.
36 RAL: RFam 000/23, 16 September 1865.
37 RAL: 000/84, 3 May 1864.
38 RAL: RFamC/1/5, 5 October 1841.
39 Keane, The Beauties, 88–91.
40 Grigson, Menagerie.
41 Ireland, Plutocrats, 155–6; RAL: XI/109/30/2/12.
42 See note 10.
43 RAL: 000/848/34. I thank Val Bott for information on the Gunnersbury dairies (e-mail to author, 12 April 2019).
44 Gans, The Le Corbusier Guide, 83.
45 RAL: RFamC/1/68, 17 July 1836.
46 RAL: RFamC/1/19, 18 August 1842.
47 RAL: RFamPL/3/2. “Orangery proposed to be Erected at Gunnersbury for the Baroness de Rothschild … Sept. 1843.”
48 RAL: RFamC/1/43, 27 September 1844.
49 RAL: X11/41/8/691, 11 November 1879 and receipts: X11/41/8B/690-2. Designs: RAL: RFamPL/3/2.
50 Gere, Nineteenth-Century, 34–40.
51 Illustrated London News, 7 March 1857.
52 Hall, “Baron Lionel,” 96–104.
53 RAL: 000/400/1 and 000/400/2.
54 Ireland, Plutocrats, 194.
55 RAL: 000/176/11.
56 Sold 24 October 2012 (Christie’s, New York, sale 2762), lot 61.
57 Sold 13 June 2002 (Christie’s, London, sale 6584), lot 50.
58 Thornton, A Rothschild Renaissance, 12–31.
59 RAL: 000/400/1-2.
60 Ireland, Plutocrats, 55–6.
61 Loewe, ed., Diaries, vol. 1, 146.
62 Hawley, “Terpsichore.”
63 A Catalogue of the Very Celebrated Gallery of Pictures of the Late Sir Simon H. Clarke (Christie and Manson, 8–9 May 1840), lots 47, 53, and 108.
64 A Catalogue of THE COLLECTION of … Pictures, The Property of The Chevalier Bach, of Danzig (Christie and Manson, 19 February 1842), lot 129. I thank Lynda McLeod at Christie’s Archive for helping me find this reference.
65 Letters between Canova and Clarke are preserved at the Musei Biblioteca Archivio, Bassano del Grappa. See Manoscritti Canoviani, 4/LXXXIV-1/1082, 30 August 1814. I thank Daniela Peretto for sending me this correspondence.
66 Rowley, “Some Questions,” 55–65.
67 Catalogue of the Magnificent Contents of 148 Piccadilly, W.1 (Sotheby & Co., 19 April 1937), lot 372.
68 Collections de San Donato, Deuxième Vente (Pillet/Petit, Paris: 26 February 1870), lots 102–5. I thank Alastair Laing for information on these pictures (e-mail to author, 11 April 2019).
69 Albumen print: Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 32662.
70 Bureau de dame, sold 13 June 2002 (Christie’s, London, sale 6584), lot 54.
71 Hall, “Baron Lionel,” 382. The painting was bought from John Newington Hughes (Christie and Manson, 15 April, 1848), lot 161, by the art dealer Christianus Johannes Nieuwenhuys (1799–1883). I thank Michael Hall for information about the paintings (e-mail to author, 7 April 2019; see also notes 68 and 75).
72 Hall, “The English Rothschilds,” 268–70. Old Master Paintings (Sotheby’s, London, 11 December 2003), lots 74 and 75.
73 Heuberger, The Rothschilds, 101 ff.
74 Hall, “‘Le goût Rothschild’”, 110–12.
75 RAL: 000/176/2, A Descriptive Catalogue of the pictures at Piccadilly and at Gunnersbury Park, undated. Ann Ford was acquired for Lionel by Agnew’s (Christie and Manson, 2 January 1870), lot 155. Miss Elizabeth Hartley was bought privately after it failed to sell at Foster’s on 23 June 1852, lot 27. The identity of the sitter is contested. Mrs R. B. Sheridan was bought at Christie and Manson, 2 March 1872, lot 40.
76 Hall, “Nathan Rothschild,” 70–71.
77 Endelman, The Jews of Britain, 95.
78 Ireland, Plutocrats, 185.
79 Ireland, Plutocrats, 350.
80 RAL: 000/84, 12 July 1866. Ireland, Plutocrats, 337.
81 Loewe, Diaries, vol. 1, 142.
82 Boykin, Victoria, 154ff.
83 The Times, 22 July 1843.
84 Benjamin Disraeli: Letters, 23 January 1858, vol. 7, 116.
85 Illustrated London News, 7 March 1857.
86 Weintraub, Charlotte, 142.
87 RAL: RFamC/6/16, 12 September 1861.
88 Hall, Waddesdon Manor, 33.
89 Loewe, ed., Diaries, vol. 1, 145.
90 Endelman, The Jews of Georgian England, 125–6.
91 The Times, 14 March 1884. RAL: RFam 000/84, 26 September 1866.
92 Mordaunt Crook, The Rise, 240.
93 Ibid., 62.
94 Endelman, The Jews of Britain, 155.
95 Mordaunt Crook, The Rise, 62–3.
96 RAL: XI/109/4, 25 May 1816. I thank Melanie Aspey for this reference.
97 RAL: 000/848/34.
98 Murray, An Absolute Passion, 19–27.
99 Collett-White, Gunnersbury Park, 45.
100 Arnold, The Georgian Villa, ix.
101 Manchester Guardian, 22 May 1926.
102 Endelman, The Jews of Britain, 155–65.
103 Hall, Waddesdon Manor, 28–31; Prévost-Marcilhacy, Les Rothschild, 64–6, 302.