Dunham Massey: Bird's-eye View from the South, 1697
Adriaen van Diest (c.1656 - 1704)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
1697 (inscribed)
Materials
Oil on canvas
Measurements
990 x 1244 mm (39 x 49 in)
Order this imageCollection
Dunham Massey, Cheshire
NT 932334
Caption
In the Great Gallery at Dunham Massey, where this picture hangs, is one of the most remarkable and comprehensive surveys of a country house ever painted. This is the earliest, showing the Tudor house in 1697, with its formal garden and newly planted park. It accords well with a view of the house from a slightly different angle, engraved by Kip after a drawing by Leonard Knyff a year later. Both show a house almost as large as the present one, entirely surrounded by a moat which was formed by damming a tributary of the diminutive river Bollin. The artist is better known for his decorative overdoor and overmantel compositions.
Summary
Oil painting on canvas, Dunham Massey: Bird's-eye View from the South, by Adriaen Van Diest (c.1656 - 1704), signed bottom, mid-left: A...Diest f, inscribed in an early hand in heavy black, bottom right: Dunham / in 1697. The 17th century house in its formal garden and newly planted park
Provenance
Bequeathed to the National Trust with the house, estate and all the contents of Dunham Massey by Roger Grey, 10th Earl of Stamford (1896 - 1976)
Marks and inscriptions
Dunham in 1697 (early inscription)
Makers and roles
Adriaen van Diest (c.1656 - 1704), artist
References
Harris 1979 John Harris, The Artist and the Country House. A History of Country House and Garden View Painting in Britain 1540-1870, London 1979, no. 157 Prized Possessions: Dutch Paintings from National Trust Houses (exh. cat.), Holburne Museum, Bath 25 May - 16 Sep 2018; Mauritshuis, The Hague, 11 Oct 2018 - 6 Jan 2019; Petworth House, West Sussex, 26 Jan - 24 Mar 2019., pp. 82-5, no. 6