Alice de Rothschild: Collector
Alice de Rothschild (1847-1922) owned Waddesdon Manor for 24 years and the adjacent estate of Eythrope for 48. She also had a London townhouse on Piccadilly, and a villa in Grasse in the South of France. Yet circumstance has meant that it is the ‘preservation’ of Waddesdon for which she is most often remembered. New archival research has
revealed more about what she collected particularly for display at Waddesdon.
Much less is known about the interiors and collections of these other houses; our knowledge of the collections at Eythrope is based on how it was when she died, in London from sales catalogues from 1923 and from Grasse only incomplete lists of pictures and drawings, along with her collection of pipes and matchboxes.
The knowledge we already had about Alice’s collection came from comparison between the probate inventory of Waddesdon’s contents taken on Ferdinand’s death, and that taken in 1922, after Alice died, which also included her Pavilion at Eythrope (objects at Waddesdon have a W number, those at Eythrope have an E number). Further insights could also be drawn from her two typescript editions of the Catalogue of the Principal Pictures, Furniture, China and other Works of Art, from 1906 and 1910. Very little archival evidence survives because most personal papers belonging to both Alice and Ferdinand were destroyed after their deaths. But in 2007, 144 receipts for art dealers were found detailing Alice’s purchases between 1904 and 1918, and the descriptions were precise enough to enable us to identify objects. This snapshot of 14 years, after inheriting Waddesdon, has given us much fuller knowledge of what Alice bought, from whom, and for how much.
Rediscovering Alice’s Waddesdon & Eythrope
There are certain key rooms in Alice’s houses that we can envisage better than others, either because the displays still exist, or the objects do. At Waddesdon, the Smoking Room had contained Ferdinand’s ‘Renaissance Museum’, which he had bequeathed to the British Museum as the ‘Waddesdon Bequest’. Alice collected objects for that room, but did not just replace like with like. She introduced Renaissance paintings, both religious and secular, and extensive arrangements of maiolica (Italian renaissance earthenware). She also created elaborate displays of arms and armour in the Billiard Room Corridor, where Ferdinand had hung mainly sporting pictures. Her Hall at Eythrope was where she displayed her Medieval and Renaissance collection, which she may have acquired before she inherited Waddesdon, and you can see an evocation of it in the Exhibition Room Corridor. Her Red Sitting Room at Waddesdon, which she created after Ferdinand’s death, was decorated with 18th-century works on paper, French furniture and French porcelain, some of which she inherited but also that she bought. It has been partly recreated in its original location from colour photographs from 1910 and can be seen in the White Drawing Room. The Tower Room contained precious objects, including many miniatures and gold boxes, amongst which the works of the Van Blarenberghe family featured heavily. Interestingly, the 1910 colour photographs of the interiors at Waddesdon only seem to concentrate on areas Alice had changed – so the Bachelors’ Wing, the Red Sitting Room, the Tower Room and her arrangements of flowers in Sèvres porcelain.
Alice’s legacy as a ‘guardian’ was partly due to her heirs James and Dorothy de Rothschild. Despite describing Alice ‘as passionate a collector as her brother’, Dorothy recounts her reign at Waddesdon thus: ‘she made very few changes, only adding one major picture and some snuffboxes. I believe she wanted to change Waddesdon as little as possible and so preserve it intact as a memorial to her brother’s taste and knowledge’ but research now suggests otherwise – she obviously enjoyed adding to the collections and creating new displays, and comparison between the 1906 and 1910 editions of her Catalogue shows she was acquiring and moving objects around. This exhibition highlights some of her major purchases and provides an overview of the breadth of her tastes.
Discover more about Alice’s Collection and the works in this exhibition here.
