England's loss, Russia's gain. (Books About Antiques).(A Capital Collection: Houghton Hall and the Hermitage)(Book Review)

A Capital Collection: Houghton Hall and the Hermitage, ed. Larissa Dukelskaya and Andrew Moore (Yale University Press, 800-288-2129), $75.00 (hardcovers).

Catherine the Great established the Hermitage picture gallery in Saint Petersburg in 1764. To fill it, this relentless acquisitor bought six large collections of paintings in rapid succession. Ten years after it was founded, the Hermitage had 2,080 pictures. The story of the next large addition, 204 pictures collected by Sir Robert Walpole (1676-1745), in 1779 is the subject of this encyclopedic book.

Walpole had already collected 113 paintings at his house Houghton Hall in Norfolk by 1736, a year after its completion. He then added more pictures from his houses in London and Chelsea, and bought still more. However, Walpole was hardly a languid aesthete, for he was also very fond of hunting and maintained packs of hounds at Houghton and at his hunting lodge in Richmond. Apparently he also had 20/20 vision for the ladies and a salty vocabulary when in the company of men. In short, he was a regular guy interested in having a good time and damn the expense. Incidently he assembled an enviable collection of pictures.

Sir Robert Walpole was never close to his fourth son, Horace (1717-1797), until the latter returned from the obligatory grand tour of the Continent in 1741. Upon his retirement from the government in 1742, Sir Robert invited his son to stay at Houghton, which Horace did, probably induced by his father's shared love of painting. Although definitely not amused by the hunt, the horse races, and the evening revels, Horace plunged into the pictures, which he catalogued in a compendium honoring his father entitled Aedes Walpolianae. The work included Horace Walpole's "Sermon on Painting" and, oddly enough, a deplorable poem by the Reverend John Whaley entitled "A Journey to Houghton." The manuscript was completed in 1743, before his father's death, but the book was not published until 1747.

Sir Robert left forty thousand pounds worth of debt behind him, and his first-born son, also Robert, the second earl of Orford, only added to it before his death m 1751. Houghton was then inherited by George Walpole (1730-1791), the only son of the second Robert, and he became the third earl of Orford. He apparently had the most profound indifference to the fate of the house and its contents. In 1773 George Walpole had his first bout of mental illness, which affected ...