By Karen Parr-Moody
NASHVILLE, Tenn. – The British TV drama “Downton Abbey” enchants viewers with the lavishness of life in a 19th-century English country house each week. Now the contents of a similarly historic home are on display at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville.
In the exhibit “Houghton Hall: Portrait of an English Country House” around 150 items from an 18th-century English home are on view through May 10.
Organized mostly by room, the exhibit imparts viewers with a sense of everything from aristocratic dining (complete with hand-painted Sèvres china) to the grandeur of a gentleman’s library (that of Sir Robert Walpole, England’s first prime minister, who built the house).
PHOTO: A 1913 painting by John Singer Sargent of Sybil Sassoon, who is credited for restoring Houghton Hall to its original grandeur./Contributed
Houghton Hall’s current owner – the seventh Marquess of Cholmondeley, David Cholmondeley – arranged to have some of the contents of his 106-room, Palladian-style house shipped to America, despite many items’ relative fragility. The contents include bespoke furniture designed by William Kent; paintings by Thomas Gainsborough and John Singer Sargent; and two pairs of extremely rare Sèvres snail vessels (Christie’s sold one such pair in 1994 for $157,102).
Shirley Woodham Hood is one of a half dozen Clarksville residents who visited the exhibit on its opening day. Hood was born just north of London and has toured many of England’s ancestral homes, as much to view the well-manicured gardens as to view the homes’ treasures.
Two pairs of the porcelain Sèvres snails belonging to Houghton Hall are on view in the exhibit. They were made from 1763 to 1768 and only a handful remain in existence./Contributed
She says: “The Houghton Hall exhibit at the Frist allows you to view these treasures as they have been placed in various rooms of the house. Being able to see this exhibit of an ancestral home from my country is thrilling, nearly as good as being there. I plan to make another visit to the Frist before the exhibit closes.”
While it is hard to pinpoint which of the exhibit’s items are most beautiful – beauty being a matter of taste – the John Singer Sargent sketches and paintings of the Sassoon family members are worth studying, as are the various Sèvres porcelain pieces.
The Frist Center for the Visual Arts is located at 919 Broadway in Nashville. For more information on the exhibit and its affiliated programs visit the website at www.fristcenter.org.
Sèvres porcelain figures largely in the exhibit, including the dinner service displayed on a stately table./Contributed
Karen Parr-Moody began a career as a New York journalist, working as a fashion reporter for Women’s Wear Daily, a beauty editor for Young Miss and a beauty and fashion writer for both In Style and People magazines. Regionally, she has been a writer at The Leaf-Chronicle newspaper and currently writes about arts and culture for Nashville Arts magazine each month.