THE WELLINGTON COLLECTION
The Wedding Party
Jan Steen (1625/26-1679)
Steen was born in Leiden and was a pupil of Jan van Goyen, and worked both in Delft and The Hague.
Steen favoured these vibrant and riotous scenes of Dutch life painted with meticulous attention to detail. He is also known for his moralising portrayals of peasant life.
The bride and groom are difficult to spot sitting under the central wreath at the back of the picture. The wedding guests are engaged in games, music and even dancing on the table. The man in the foreground is intended as a self-portrait.
The artist kept an inn in Leiden so was probably used to lively drunken scenes.
Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington
Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830)
This portrait was commissioned in 1817 but not finished until 1818.
Wellington is shown in his Field Marshal’s uniform wearing his Spanish honour, the Golden Fleece. His arms folded and gazing directly at the viewer, the embodiment of the military commander.
Wellington famously disliked sitting for his portrait but appeared to favour Lawrence who painted seven portraits of the 1st Duke before his untimely death in 1830.
Wellington commissioned this painting for Marianne Patterson (later Marchioness Wellesley) a beautiful American whom he greatly admired. At the same time, he commissioned Lawrence to paint Mrs Patterson, and hung this portrait in his library at Stratfield Saye.
Portrait of a Man (José Nieto?)
Diego Velázquez (1599-1660)
The identity of the sitter has caused much debate: could he be the artist Alonso Cano; the playwright Pedro Calderón; or even the artist himself?
A more recent suggestion is José Nieto, who appears in the background of the famous Las Meninas painting (Prado, Madrid), and was a chamberlain in the Spanish royal household. Certainly the artist would have known José Nieto but his would be a much younger version of the man who appears in Las Meninas.
Some elements of the portrait appear sketchy but the intense gaze of the sitter is powerful and engaging, heightened by the fact that the colour palette is limited and all the viewer’s concentration is drawn by the face with its powerful gaze.
A Flemish Village Festival
David Teniers the Younger (1610-1690)
Born in Antwerp, where he was a pupil of his father, David Teniers I, he was one of the most prolific Flemish artists.
Teniers specialised in scenes of peasant life. Whether portraying village games, festivals or pastoral scenes, he excelled at showing the intimate details of country life.
The ‘Village Festival’ is full of activity and characters; a group of women running a race; the inn keeper, in his white apron, drinking the health of the winner of another game. A group of men in the foreground are caught up in their own activity of drinking and talking.
Sèvres Vase
(1814)
This Sèvres Vase is one of a pair on display at Apsley House where they have been since at least the 1840s. These two vases show the quality of the workmanship associated with the Sèvres factory.
Decorated with an image of a now extinct type of South African zebra called a quagga, the other vase features a gnu, and they were both taken from a series of aquatints that the expedition artist Samuel Daniell’s produced in 1799.
Daniells travelled to South Africa and his prints were widely distributed. Both vases stand on an ormolu (gilt bronze) foot by the celebrated goldsmith Pierre-Philippe Thomire (1751-1843).
Sèvres were the leading French manufacturer of ceramics and was founded in 1738 becoming a royal factory in 1759. In 1875 the factory was transferred from Sèvres to a new building, funded by the state, next to the Parc de Saint Cloud where it still stands today.