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Politics has always been at the heart of the English country house,
in its design and construction, as well as in the activities and
experiences of those who lived in and visited these places. As
Britain moved from an agrarian to an imperial economy over the
course of the eighteenth century, the home mirrored the social
change experienced in the public sphere. This collection focuses on
the relationship between the country house and the mutable nature
of British politics in the eighteenth century. Essays explore the
country house as a stage for politicking, a vehicle for political
advancement, a symbol of party allegiance or political values, and
a setting for appropriate lifestyles. Initially the exclusive
purview of the landed aristocracy, politics increasingly came to be
played out in the open, augmented by the emergence of career
politicians – usually untitled members of the patriciate – and
men of new money, much of it created on Caribbean plantations or in
the employ of the East India Company. Politics and the English
Country House, 1688–1800 reveals how, during this period of
profound change, the country house remained a constant. The country
house was the definitive tangible manifestation of social standing
and, for the political class, owning one became almost an
imperative. In its consideration of the country house as lived and
spatial experience, as an aesthetic and symbolic object, and as an
economic engine, this book offers a new perspective on the
complexity of political meaning embedded in the eighteenth-century
country house – and on ourselves as active recipients and
interpreters of its various narratives, more than two centuries
later.
In the mid-eighteenth century, English gentlemen filled their
houses with copies and casts of classical statuary while the
following generation preferred authentic antique originals. By
charting this changing preference within a broader study of
material culture, Joan Coutu examines the evolving articulation of
the English gentleman. Then and Now consists of four case studies
of mid-century collections. Three were amassed by young aristocrats
- the Marquis of Rockingham, the Duke of Richmond, and the Earl of
Huntingdon - who, consistent with their social standing, were
touted as natural political leaders. Their collections evoke the
concept of gentlemanly virtue through example, offering archetypes
to encourage men toward acts of public virtue. As the aristocrats
matured in the politically fractious realm of the 1760s, such
virtue could become politicized. A fourth study focuses on Thomas
Hollis, who used his collection to proselytize his own unique
political ideology. Framed by studies of collecting practices
earlier and later in the century, Coutu also explores the fluid
temporal relationship with the classical past as the century
progressed, firmly situating the discussion within the
contemporaneous emerging field of aesthetics. Broadening the focus
beyond published texts to include aesthetic conversations among the
artists and the aristocracy in Italy and England, Then and Now
shows how an aesthetic canon emerged - embodied in the Apollo
Belvedere, the Venus de' Medici, and the like - which shaped the
Grand Manner of art.
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