A Thing of Beauty Is a Joy Forever
by M. Kirby Talley, Jr.
AS KEATS FAMOUSLY PUT IT in his poem Endymion, “A thing of beauty is a joy forever.” As a premise in aesthetics this sentiment is correct. Regrettably in the real world, things of beauty, both great and small, are constantly under threat. One needs only to think of World Wars I and II to realise the extent of irreplaceable losses to our built cultural heritage and the contents which graced their interiors.
During World War II entire cities were bombed to dust. The works of brilliant architects and the extraordinarily talented craftsmen who labouriously brought them to life — which sometimes required centuries to complete — were wilfully destroyed in the fiery twinkling of an eye.
John Ruskin, one of the greatest of all writers on art and architecture, saw buildings in The Lamp of Memory in his Seven Lamps of Architecture almost as anthropomorphic objects. “The greatest glory of a building … is in its Age, and in that deep sense of voicefulness, of stern watching, of mysterious sympathy, nay, even of approval or condemnation, which we feel in walls that have long been washed by the passing waves of humanity.” Great buildings stand as sentinels to the ingenuity, creativity, and genius of the human mind, and the desire to achieve a perfect blend of beauty and facility.
While war is the most notorious cause of the destruction of beauty, many others, less dramatic, are just as final. Anyone who saw the 1974 Victoria & Albert Museum exhibition, The Destruction of the Country House, 1875 – 1974, or its catalogue, will not forget the intense sorrow caused by looking at photographs of remarkable buildings and interiors, most of which are completely gone and now only known thanks to these haunting images. Fire destroyed many of these houses, poor location others, owners’ whims quite a few, but lack of finances to maintain such establishments counted for the majority of losses.
The 1974 V & A exhibition spurred a renewed impulse for heritage preservation in Great Britain, already a leader in the field with its renowned privately funded National Trust for England, Wales, and Northern Ireland (1895/1907), and the National Trust for Scotland (1931). In 1983 English Heritage, a governmental organisation, was established. The United States was not far behind Great Britain with John D. Rockefeller Jr.’s Colonial Williamsburg (1928/1970), the Preservation Society of Newport County (1945), and the American National Trust for Historic Preservation (1949). Regardless how many such organisations, whether privately or government funded, are now operating around the world, not enough of them exist to keep up with the daily losses to the global international cultural heritage.
We have a tendency to forget just how many private owners of country houses still exist in Britain who manage to maintain their ofttimes immense domiciles filled with irreplaceable treasures. Their preservation achievements have been the result of love for their ancestral homes, and the landscape settings which set them off to such advantage. Most country house owners today realise they are more custodians than owners.
While financial necessity initially forced many of these owners to open their homes to the public, these days most do so with pleasure and an awareness that such beauty and history should be shared. This was eloquently expressed by Paul Mellon, discriminating collector and benefactor par excellence, when he insisted the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., be accessible for all to “enjoy a five minute reverie with beauty.”
Today it has become ever more important for the private sector to step forward and play an active rôle in the preservation of art and architecture — in fact culture in general — an essential undertaking now being increasingly shunned by governments everywhere due to budget cuts and a distressing lack of understanding of the significance of history. If people are denied — for whatever reasons — the opportunity to properly comprehend the whys and ways of the past and how they brought them to where they are, they will never perceive how they should attempt to best proceed into an unknown and uncertain future.
Dr. Ann and Charles Johnson deserve immense praise for their insightful courage and unstinting determination in undertaking the stunning restoration of Château Carolands, one of the largest private residences ever built in America.
Inspiration for Carolands comes from various sources, primary among them Madame de Pompadour’s Château de Bellevue at Meudon, alas torn down in 1823, and the much earlier Château de Maisons by François Mansart, still standing N.W. of Paris. Actual work on Harriett Pullman Carolan’s dream house began in 1914, but the subsequent history of the building project, and the house’s life after Mrs. Carolan, is not an especially joyful story. That saga is captivatingly told in an engaging and highly informative documentary film, Three Women and a Château.
Over the years, this American Château remarkably escaped several close encounters with the wrecker’s ball. Considering the size of the house — 98 rooms in a 67,066 square foot mansion — and its degraded condition, courage again comes readily to mind when Charles and Dr. Ann Johnson bought Carolands in 1998. A meticulous, multi-year restoration was undertaken and in 2012 the Johnsons donated le château des trois dames to the Carolands Foundation. Thanks to their vision and generosity, this masterpiece of Gilded Age American architecture is open to future generations for their delectation and edification.
Curriculum Vitae
Dr. M. Kirby Talley, Jr. holds a Ph.D. in art history from the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, a doctoraal in art history from the University of Amsterdam, a M.A. from Rutgers University, and a B.A. from Trinity College, Hartford, with additional study at Trinity College, Dublin. Born in Baltimore, Maryland, he has spent most of his professional career based in Amsterdam where he directed fine art, museum, and conservation programs for the Dutch Ministry of Culture in The Netherlands, Russia, and other European countries. He was the founding director of the State Training School for Conservation, The Netherlands; curator of Old Master Paintings, Dutch National Collection, The Hague, and executive counsellor to the Ministry for international programs becoming the Ministry’s ambassador for the international cultural heritage. He has 85 publications to his name — books, essays, articles (scholarly, literary, journalistic); 95 lectures, talks, seminars and workshops for 70 institutions in 15 countries, and was curator/guest curator of 5 exhibitions in the U.S.
Between 2003 – 2008, he served as founding director, director of the restoration, and interior designer of the Richard H. Driehaus Museum in Chicago, the former Samuel Mayo Nickerson mansion. Presently, he is completing a book on 18th-century European cultural, political, and social life.
Suggested Reading
- Benjamin, Susan and Stuart Cohen, Great Houses of Chicago 1871 – 1921, New York: Acanthus Press, 2008
- Boutelle, Sara Holmes, Julia Morgan Architect, New York: Abbeville Press, 1995.
- Bryan, John, Biltmore Estate: The Most Distinguished Private Place, New York: Rizzoli, 1994.
- Cohen, Stuart and Susan Benjamin, North Shore Chicago: Houses of the Lakefront Suburbs 1890 – 1940, New York: Acanthus Press, 2004.
- Cranen, Wayne, Gilded Mansions: Grand Architecture and High Society, W.W. Norton & Company, 2008.
- Davidson, Gail S., Floramae McCarron-Cates, Charlotte Gere, House Proud: Nineteenth-Century Watercolor Interiors from the Thaw Collection, New York: Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, 2008.
- Davidson, Marshall B., The American Heritage History of Notable American Houses, New York: American Heritage Publishing Co., Inc., 1971.
- Folsom, Merrill, Great American Mansions and Their Stories, New York: Hastings House, 1963.
- Gannon, Thomas, Newport Mansions: The Gilded Age, Little Compton, RI: Fort Church Publishers, Inc., 1996.
- Gere, Charlotte, Nineteenth-Century Decoration: The Art of the Interior, New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1989.
- Howe, Katherine S., et al, Herter Brothers: Furniture and Interiors for a Gilded Age, New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1994.
- Kastner, Victoria, Hearst Castle: The Biography of a Country House, New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2000.
- Kathrens, Michael C., Newport Villas: The Revival Styles 1885 – 1935, New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2009.
- Kimball, Fiske, The Creation of the Rococo Decorative Style, New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1980.
- MacTaggart, Ross, Millionaires, Mansions, and Motor Yachts: An Era of Opulence, New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2004.
- Maher, James T., The Twilight of Splendor: Chronicles of the Age of the American Palaces, Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1975.
- Piotrovsky, Mikhail Borisovich, et al, The Winter Palace Saint Petersburg, Paris: Alain de Gourcuff Éditeur, 1994. [This magnificent book presents reproductions of watercolours that record the interiors of the Winter Palace in great detail. They were originally commissioned by Nicholas I and completed during the reign of Alexander II. MKT]
- Reichold, Klaus, Palaces That Changed The World, Munich: Prestel, 2003.
- Rybczynski, Witold and Laurie Olin, Vizcaya: An American Villa and Its Makers, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007.
- Sanger, Martha Frick Symington, The Henry Clay Frick Houses: Architecture, Interiors, Landscapes in the Golden Era, New York: The Monacelli Press, Inc. 2001.
- Seale, William, Of Houses & Time: Personal Histories of America’s National Trust Properties, New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1992.
- Stanley Price, Nicholas, M. Kirby Talley, Jr., Alessandra Melucco Vaccaro, Historical and Philosophical Issues in the Conservation of Cultural Heritage, Los Angeles: The Getty Conservation Institute, 1996.
- Strahan, Edward, Mr. Vanderbilt’s House and Collection, 4 vols., Boston: George Barrie, 1883-4. [These lushly illustrated books record Christian Herter’s masterpiece, Mr. William Henry Vanderbilt’s uniquely original mansion that ran from the corner of 51st Street to the corner of 52nd Street on Fifth Avenue in New York City. MKT]
- Strong, Roy, et al, The Destruction of the Country House, 1875 – 1974, exhibition catalogue, Victoria and Albert Museum, 1974.
- Talley, Jr., M. Kirby, This House Was The Pride of The Town: Mr. Nickerson’s Marble Palace Becomes Mr. Driehaus’ Museum, Washington, DC: Cottontail Publications, 2008.
- Walter, Marc and Jérôme Coignard, Dream Palaces: The Last Royal Courts of Europe, New York: The Vendome Press, 2004.
- Wharton, Edith and Ogden Codman, Jr., The Decoration of Houses, New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1978.
- Whitehead, John, The French Interior in the Eighteenth Century, sine loco: Laurence King Publishing, 1992.
- Worsley, Giles, England’s Lost Houses: From the Archives of Country Life, London: Aurum Press Limited, 2002.