THE ART OF POLITICS
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IDaily Express Monday February 26 2018 N THE magnificent splendour of Chequers, the Elizabethan manor house which for 100 years has been the country retreat of Britain’s Prime Ministers, the Brexit “war cabinet” met to make vital decisions that Theresa May told them would “shape this country for a generation”.
How appropriate then that all around them in the 16th-century Great Hall were priceless works of art which reflect 400 years of our political history.
The paintings, tapestries and Cromwell antiquities fill the house, which nestles in the Chiltern Hills 40 miles north-west of London. Many of them were collected over a 300-year period when the estate was owned by a succession of noblemen.
When the last of the ancestral owners, Henry Delavel Astley, died in 1912, American heiress Ruth Lee bought it for her British husband Arthur who built up a remarkable collection of portraits of the heroes of the late 16th to early 18th-century period, including Sir Walter Raleigh, Lord Clarendon, Prince Rupert, Sir Francis Bacon and the Duke of Marlborough.
He also purchased works by major artists including Rembrandt, Constable, Reynolds and Van Dyck. After the First World War, the Lees – by now Lord and Lady Lees of Fareham – generously gave their home to the nation as a weekend retreat for prime ministers. Its treasure-trove of contents has been inspiring visitors ever since. Here is what the “war cabinet” saw in their two meeting rooms. The central chamber, around which the rest of the house was built, is known as the Great Hall. It is two stories high and panelled in fine wood.
Along one side, halfway up, is a gallery off which most of the bedrooms open. The hall contains a grand piano, highly valuable porcelain, a gigantic 40ft by 40ft rug and a magnificent 6ft by 3ft decorated chest.
(Top) Portrait Of A Lady by George Geldorp (1595–1665), a Flemish painter who was mainly active in England and noted for portraits of noblemen. 2.
Sir William Russell by Mary Beale (1633 – 1699). Beale was one of the relatively few women artists of the time but extremely successful.
Lady Croke, née Brigette Hawtrey, last of the Hawtrey family, attributed to Marcus the Younger. The clerk was responsible for the rolls of paper on which the government’s spending and income were recorded.
Bridget Cromwell (1624 – 1660) by Cornelius Johnson (1593 – 1661). She was Oliver Cromwell’s eldest daughter and married Cromwell’s colleague General Henry Ireton.
Master Franklin, attributed to one of the “British School of Artists”. Little is known about the artist’s subject except that he was a vicar’s son and a portrait of his mother hangs elsewhere in Chequers.
A beautiful grand piano that Winston Churchill loved to listen to.
(Left) Sir Thomas Hazelrigge, 1624, by Michiel Jansz van Mierevelt. Sir Thomas commanded the Leicestershire cavalry and served as an MP in James I’s short “Addled” Parliament (so called because it was ineffective)of 1614.
Portrait Of An Officer, 1657, by Bartholomeus van der Heist (1613 – 1670). Considered to be one of the leading portrait painters of the Dutch Golden Age, Van der Heist was more popular in his day than Rembrandt.
Another work by van der Heist entitled Portrait of a Lady, 1650. It is not known who the lady is.
Sir Robert Walpole by JeanBaptiste van Loo (1684 – 1745). Van Loo was a French portrait painter who captured Walpole in his robes as Chancellor of the Exchequer around 1715. Walpole also had the title First Lord of the Treasury and was in effect our first prime minister.