Travel Chatsworth revisited
The Duke and Duchess of Devonshire have boldly inserted modern art alongside the house’s ancient treasures. By Harry Mount
T
he National Trust could learn a thing or two from the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire. In recent years, the Trust has disastrously modernised by dumbing down. At Disraeli’s home, Hughenden in Buckinghamshire, they misspell his name. Next to a tree there, they’ve planted one of their endless kiddie signs, saying, ‘Please do not climb on me.’ Inside the house at Osterley, another patronising sign says, ‘It was the scullery maid’s job to empty and clean the chamber pots every morning. A very smelly job.’ At Chatsworth, there’s none of this dumbing down. The picture captions are intelligent and grown-up; the signs free of baby language. But, still, there is constant modernisation going on. Outside the house this spring, a taste of the Black Rock Desert in Nevada is coming to Derbyshire. The annual Burning Man event is being recreated in Chatsworth’s 1,000-acre park, with 12 giant sculptures scattered across the estate. When the show closes at the end of the year, one of the sculptures will be burnt to the ground, just as it is in Nevada. Meanwhile, inside the house, dozens 80 The Oldie Spring 2022
The Duke and Duchess of Devonshire in front of Chatsworth
of new paintings and sculptures have popped up among the Old Masters and Renaissance statues. In a new exhibition, Living With Art We Love, the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire have placed their favourite works from acquisitions over the past 40 years, few of which have been on public display before. The new jumps out sparklingly against the old. And the old stands forth in a different light when placed next to the new. A luminous screenprint of a Corbusier chair by Michael Craig-Martin hovers
over William Kent’s classical chairs from Chiswick House, once the Devonshires’ west London home. Picasso sketches, collected by the Duchess, sit harmoniously opposite Chatsworth’s two heart-stopping Rembrandts, Portrait of an Old Man and Man in Oriental Costume. A ceramic pot, with abstract Chinese designs by Felicity Aylieff, soars above the baroque staircase (pictured). The Duke of Devonshire says, ‘All the collecting generations of my family have added modern works and some have made significant changes to the
