THE CUSTODIANS of Castle Howard are selling off 10 treasures, with a combined estimated price of more than £10million, to pay for the upkeep of one of Britain’s grandest country houses.
From Roman antiquities to Old Masters, the works form part of what Sotheby’s describes as “among the finest private art collections in the world”. They have been amassed over 300 years by the Howard family, beginning with the 3rd Earl of Carlisle who commissioned the Baroque pile in 1699.
But the house known to millions for its starring role in television’s
Brideshead Revisited adaptation is not cheap to run. The works are being sold by the current keepers of Castle Howard, brothers Nicholas and Simon Howard, to secure its financial future.
The most expensive lot is a view of Venice’s Grand Canal by Bernardo Bellotto, pupil and nephew of Canaletto, with a presale estimate of £2.5million- £3.5million. A striking portrait of Henry VIII, from the studio of Hans Holbein, is expected to fetch £800,000-£1.2million. It is dated 1542, the year that Henry’s fifth wife, Catherine Howard, was beheaded. As the name suggests, she and the current residents of the house share an ancestry.
The sale comes at a time of change at Castle Howard. It was announced before Christmas that in “a new chapter”, Nicholas Howard would be moving into the house and taking charge of its dayto-day running with his wife, Victoria, a former chief executive of HarperCollins.
Since 1983, it had been run by his younger brother, Simon, who volunteered for the task as a young man while Nicholas and the eldest of the brothers, Henry, were reluctant to handle such responsibility. Henry died in 2008. Simon has said: “I must have been 17 and just about to leave Eton when my father sat us all down and said, ‘I don’t know if any of you are interested but...’ and that decided it for me.
“So I went to study estate management and then the arts and I don’t think at the time I realised what a responsibility it would be.”
In 2001, Simon married his second wife, Rebecca, who soon gave birth to twins, Merlin and Octavia.
A glamorous figure who fell in love with Castle Howard at 14 after watching Brideshead – an unkind
Vanity Fair profile called her “The Woman Who Set Out To Marry A House” – she breathed new life into the place, inviting locals and staff to weekly tango lessons. The couple devoted themselves to the upkeep of the house, which has been open to the public since 1952, while Nicholas lived in London and worked as a photographer.
Simon overcame throat cancer last year. His wife gave an insight into the challenges of running such an enormous house, with its 145 rooms and 10,000 acres, in a 2011
Tatler interview. “You might think you are walking on to the set of a fairytale and it looks magnificent and it’s wonderful, but it’s hard work,” she said.
“It’s blood, sweat and tears for Simon. Sometimes I wake up at 3.30 in the morning and he’s in his office. He works like a demon and anyone who says he doesn’t is, frankly, talking rubbish.”
Simon’s money-saving plans included environmentally friendly heating to halve the house’s annual fuel bill. It cost £160,000 to install. “I nearly fell off my chair when they gave me the quote,” he said.
Both families now live in the house, occupying apartments in separate wings. Simon and Rebecca’s twins are 13, and Rebecca has said Merlin sometimes found it hard to share the family home with the visiting public. “He likes going to his friends’ houses and running into the back garden where it’s just their dog, their swing and them.” The broth- ers have sanctioned the sale to raise much-needed funds. Nicholas said: “I am privileged to be able to say that Castle Howard is my family’s heritage and has been since it was built over 300 years ago. If the sale helps to secure that heritage as the house moves into its fourth century, then it will have achieved its goal.”
Simon added: “These are works of art that have given us enormous pleasure over the years, and we dearly hope that they will bring as much inspiration and joy to their new owners as they have to our family and our visitors over the last 300 years.”
Lots also include a granite vase from Roman Egypt (est £400,000£600,000), an early 16th-century relief of the Virgin and Child from the workshop of Jacopo Sansovino (£400,000-£600,000), Ferdinand Bol’s Portrait of a Boy (£2-£3million), and two 17th-century Italian cabinets (£800,000£1million)
They will be auctioned as part of Sotheby’s Old Masters and Treasures sales in London on July 8.