The Dutch Room

Created out of two smaller rooms in the 1930s, during the 2nd Lord Faringdon’s extensive alterations to the house, the Dutch Room has a plasterwork ceiling and frieze made at that date in the Adam style, and an early nineteenth-century white marble chimney-piece.

Pictures

The room contains the most beautiful and renowned painting at Buscot – Rembrandt’s portrait (1655) of a man who is now identified, but not with certainty, as Pieter Six, the elder brother of the great Rembrandt collector, Burgomaster Jan Six (No.25). The portrait of a woman, framed as a pair to it, is not in fact a companion picture and its association with Rembrandt must be regarded as doubtful.

To the left of the fireplace, the portrait by Rubens, Violante Maria Spinola Serra (No.28), is an early work of about 1607, done in Genoa towards the end of the artist’s years in Italy. Other works here are by Jordaens (No.22), a follower of Van Dyck (No.33), Honthorst (No.65) and Withoos (No.101).

Furniture

The set of six single chairs, two stools and settee, is of the Chippendale period, and is decorated with a Gothick fret pattern in low relief. The contemporary gros-point needlework covers are both signed and dated by the local ‘upholder’, S. Price of Gloucester Jany 12th 1771. The two satinwood commodes with concave fronts, inlaid with paterae, are closely related to Chippendale’s work in the neo-classical style of about 1775, and the commode on the wall opposite the door, in mahogany and satinwood, is of the same period.

Between the windows is an unusual pair of side-tables of the Sheraton period, completely veneered with tortoiseshell, stained green and red. The oval mirrors above – in giltwood frames with festoons of husks, paterae and ribbons – are further examples of the Adam style.

At the far end of the room are a pair of fine inlaid cabinets, probably made in Spain or the Spanish Netherlands. The highly elaborate tops of the cabinets, decorated with red-stained tortoiseshell and engraved bone, date from the mid-seventeenth century and are considerably older than their bases.

On the early ninteenth-century writing-table are two early Qing vases and covers of the mid-seventeenth century. The set of rosewood and walnut occasional tables, the smallest having a chequerboard top, is probably by Gillows of Lancaster, dating from the Regency period. On one of these occasional tables is a silver case confirming Stephen Henry Sulivan’s (an ancestor of Lord Faringdon’s paternal grandmother) commission as First Secretary at Lisbon, signed by William IV.  To the front of the fireplace stands a pair of Sheraton satinwood pole-screens with painted panels.  

Ceramics and Objets d'Art

The bronzes on the chimney-piece include a pair of cupids, their late-eighteenth century ormolu plinths swagged with laurel baguettes in the Greek style fashionable during Louis XVI’s reign, as well as a group of three putti, all nineteenth-century French, and a pair of tritons, possibly derived from those on the Fontana del Moro in the Piazza Navona in Rome. The display table, recently commissioned from Thomas Messel, contains various objets de virtu.

On the tables between the windows are two early Qing vases and covers of the mid-seventeenth century, and one yellow Worcester and one Paris jardinière, while below them is a pair of famille verte vases of the reign of Kangxi (1662–1722).

The Estate Office,

Buscot Park, Faringdon,

Oxfordshire SN7 8BU.

Telephone: 01367 240786

Email: estbuscot@aol.com