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a personal view

Since becoming custodian a decade ago, the DUKE OF DEVONSHIRE has used Chatsworth as a platform
for his growing collection of artwork and evolving tastes, from contemporary pottery to sculpture and painting
I
remember very clearly the arrival of Lucian Freud’s portrait of my
mother. I was a teenager already interested in a vague sort of way
with visual arts, but this work formed my perception of art and how
people react to it. My parents, two sisters and I had just moved into
Chatsworth. My mother had spent two years completely refurbishing
and redecorating the part of the house we were to occupy and this
portrait was hung in a key place in the drawing room, along with
several other family portraits by Sargent, Batoni and Reynolds
to name just a few.
The Duke and Duchess My parents had an eclectic group of friends but, as far as I remember at Woman in a White Shirt,
of Devonshire in the State least, none of them liked this new addition. Some were polite, some were by Lucian Freud,
Music Room at Chatsworth horrified and said so, but my parents were quite unmoved and laughed at this c.1958-60
universal disdain. I don’t know if they ever wavered privately in their enjoy-
ment of the painting – certainly I never heard any such doubt. For the first
time in my life I spent a long while just looking at the portrait and soon came
to love it. It was frequently described as a ‘sad’ and ‘ugly’ likeness, but I real-
ised that Freud had captured my mother’s great beauty brilliantly. From then
on I realised that it is fine to like what your friends don’t like and that new
ways of painting were just as interesting as the historic approaches. These
two influences have remained important to me ever since.
My wife Amanda and I have now lived at Chatsworth for nearly 10 years
Porcelain pot by
and in this time we have been lucky enough to have been able to make a
John Spearman
number of additions to the art collection here. We have rehung nearly all the
Portrait of the Acheson
rooms in both the private part of the house as well as on the visitor route. Sisters, by John Singer
In the latter spaces our guiding principle has been to restore the rooms as
Sargent, 1902
much as possible to how they were originally furnished. We have, however,
made a few contemporary interventions of our own, such as a suite of ceramics
made by Pippin Drysdale, now sitting on a boulle bureau plat in the State
Music Room, and several pots by Sara Flynn on a side table in the Great
Dining Room. These additions will change as we make acquisitions – we like
to share new arrivals with visitors for a year or two before taking the works
into our own apartment. Others, such as the monumental Chinese Ladders
by Felicity Aylieff on the landing of the Great Stairs and the digital portrait
of our daughter-in-law Laura Burlington in the grotto on the ground floor,
seem to have found more permanent homes.
My interest in contemporary ceramics began eight years ago, triggered by
the gift of a small and very beautiful pot made by John Spearman. From the View of Chatsworth from
Digital portrait of the moment that I unpacked it I was hooked on ceramics. I find displaying them the Canal Pond and the
Countess of Burlington, by in the grandeur of the State Rooms and the Great Dining Room is a test of Emperor Fountain
Michael Craig-Martin, 2011 their aesthetic qualities. © DEVONSHIRE COLLECTION, CHATSWORTH, REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION OF CHATSWORTH SETTLEMENT TRUSTEES; CHATSWORTH HOUSE TRUST; MICHAEL CRAIG-MARTIN
We have also made a big change in the house with the creation of a new
gallery, brilliantly masterminded by Peter Inskip. This project took more
than four years and involved a lengthy process to choose the artist we thought
would produce something of lasting interest and beauty. Jacob van der
Beugel was the youngest but the most impressive of a formidable shortlist.
His vision of using a semi abstract interpretation of four of our family
members’ DNA has produced an awesome ceramic sculpture, which gives so
much pleasure to our visitors and ourselves.
Rearranging and adding to the collection is a passion Amanda and I share;
we are always planning changes and I cannot believe that we shall ever sit back
and say that the job is done. That would be depressing to even think about
Porcelain vessels from A portrait of the 5th

Pippin Drysdale’s Duke of Devonshire, by
‘Quest’, an exhibition of ceramic sculptures by Alexander Macdonald-Buchanan,
Kimberley Series 2 Pompeo Batoni, 1768
is at Chatsworth until October 25; chatsworth.org
NOVEMBER 2015 HOUSEANDGARDEN.CO.UK