View of Longleat

Location

Country: UK
City: London
Place: Victoria & Albert Museum (long-term loans)

This view of Longleat was probably commissioned by Sir Thomas Thynne. In ‘The Artist and the Country House (1979), John Harris writes:

‘[Thynne] was obviously an important early patron of Siberechts as he commissioned this view in 1675 soon after his arrival from Holland. In fact it is unprecedented for a patron to order no less than three versions of the same view. The first was in 1675, the second in 1676 (Longleat House, Wiltshire), and the third in 1678. The painter shows Longleat as a great Elizabethan house and at a moment when it had been receiving minor alterations to its exterior and probably to its interior as well. The parterres had been swept away, and, unusual for so grand a house, replaced by simple grassed enclosures with the park pressing in on all sides. A mark of Siberechts’s accuracy can be judged by the growth of creepers on the house walls in the interval between 1675 and 1678. We can also observe that the south garden wall has received an iron palisade.’

Jan Siberechts, Flemish painter of landscape in oil and watercolour, was baptised in Antwerp, where his father was a sculptor. He settled in England in around 1672, and remained in the country until his death. He developed a Flemish landscape style, and in England he perfected a type of country-house portrait and made some remarkable bird’s-eye views of country estates.

Places

England, Longleat, Wiltshire

Subjects

carriage, horseback, deer hunting, sport, topography, landscape C17th, genre, cow, dog, horse, deer, hill, man, woman, 17th century costume, road, gate, garden, lawn, railing, house, balustrade, fountain, steps, wall

Materials & Techniques

canvas, oil, oil painting

Artist

Jan Siberechts (1627 - 1703)

Title

View of Longleat

Date

1678

Medium

Oil on canvas

Dimensions

height: 122.00 cm, width: 169.00 cm

Acquisition

Purchased from William Hallsborough Ltd, May 1959

Inscription

sdc

Provenance

With William Hallsborough Ltd. by 1957, from whom purchased by the Ministry of Works in 1959

GAC number

4959