The Duchess of Curiosities  - the noble naturalist, forgotten by history

19 Mar 2006 - 01 Mar 2008
The Harley Gallery, Nottinghamshire

The Harley Gallery present 'The Duchess of Curiosities', the first exhibition to narrate the forgotten life of Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Portland, one of the 18th century’s greatest collectors.

“Surely an application to natural beauties must enlarge the mind? This house with all belonging to it is a noble school for contemplations!”
Mrs Delany, the Duchess' eternal companion and fellow ‘Bluestocking’

Margaret Cavendish was a woman of science before her time, one of the greatest collectors of the 18th century who assembled the world-famous Portland Museum, a patron of Captain Cook, who had a circle of friends and associates including some of the most radical, intellectual and creative thinkers of the time.

'The Duchess of Curiosities' explores her extraordinary life:

Daughter and grand-daughter of collectors and brought up in the company of great writers and artists including Alexander Pope, Jonathon Swift 
• Heiress to a family collection stretching back to the Earl of Arundel
• Married her ‘Sweet William’, 2nd Duke of Portland and was mother of six children
• Owner of one of the largest natural history collection in 18th century Britain
• Friend to poets, painters, philosophers, scholars and Royalty including Joshua Reynolds, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, David Garrick and Samuel Johnson
• Creator of lost gardens, a zoo and an aviary
• Owner of the Portland Vase

Margaret was encouraged by her father and grandfather to collect from an early age.  Her childhood curiosity for natural history specimens, in particular shells, grew into a serious and philosophical desire to understand the natural world.  After her marriage to ‘Sweet William’, Margaret began collecting in earnest, both natural history specimens and fine and decorative arts.  Her home, Bulstrode House in Buckinghamshire, became her museum.

This was the second half of the 18th century, a time of the great private collectors and the birth of our national museums. It was also the Enlightenment, a period when the brightest minds were challenging traditional belief systems and women were striving for intellectual equality.  Margaret was a member of ‘The Bluestockings’, a group of aristocratic women who hoped to establish women’s intellectual independence in a socially acceptable form. They were patrons and promoters of learning, presiding over salons in London and country houses such as Bulstrode. 

Within this creative company and with her own personal fortune, Margaret was able to pursue her collecting habits without restriction.  Drawing from the farthest reaches of the world, from Lapland to the South Seas, her collection of natural specimens was the largest and most celebrated of its time.  From spiders to fungi, from butterflies to coral, she assembled type species, drawing and recording them in an extraordinary expression of the practical science of the Enlightenment. 

Bulstrode or ‘The Hive’ as it was known is court circles, was a place of great activity, a place not only for the display of Margaret’s collection but where she and her team of botanists, entomologists and ornithologists worked.  Scores of people would visit, from scholars, philosophers and scientists to Royalty. The Portland Museum was legendary; a place of delights where the ancient and the living were arranged side by side and where people came to be amazed at nature captured in its full diversity. 

If Margaret’s children had shared her passions, her museum may have survived and she may have remained as famous today as she was during her life.  However on her death the entire contents of the museum were auctioned.  Taken from Bulstrode to the Duchess’ London residence, over 4000 lots were sold in April 1786.  Not surprisingly the sale took an astonishing 35 days and attracted hundreds of people.

Only fragments of the Portland Museum survive, Bulstrode was demolished in the 19th century.  The Duchess is all but forgotten and her name lives on, not associated with her museum but as the name of a rose she collected, (The Portland Rose), and The Portland Vase*, a Roman glass vessel from the 1st century BC which she bought before her death.

This exhibition includes fine and decorative arts that were bought back by the Cavendish family in the auction including pieces from a silver-gilt dessert service designed by Margaret which crawls with exquisitely modelled insects.  A display of natural history recreates some of sights that would have astonished visitors to The Portland Museum. 

Few men have rivalled Margaret Cavendish in the mania of collecting, and perhaps no woman.  In an age of great collectors she rivalled the greatest.”
  Horace Walpole

NOTES TO EDITORS

Further information  Susan Sherrit
   ssherrit@harley-welbeck.co.uk
   01909 501700
Address:   The Harley Gallery, Welbeck, Worksop, Nottinghamshire, S80 3LW
Opening Times:   Tuesday – Sunday 10am – 5pm
Admission:  Free
Facilities:  Full disabled access, Craft Shop, Cafe.
Website:   www.harleygallery.co.uk

The Duchess of Curiosities by Professor Rebecca Stott

An essay charting the life of Margaret Cavendish written by Prof Rebecca Stott accompanies the exhibition. Rebecca Stott is a literary historian and regular broadcaster on Radio 4. She teaches in the English Literature Department of Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge and is an affiliated scholar in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at Cambridge University. She is the author of the history of science books Darwin and the Barnacle, Oyster, and Theatres of Glass and has just completed a novel called Ghostwalk to be published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson in 2007

Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Portland

Margaret Cavendish was born in 1715 to Lady Henrietta Cavendish Holles, the richest woman in England and Edward Harley, the 2nd Duke of Oxford, bibliophile, collector and patron of the arts.  She grew up at Wimpole Hall in Cambridgeshire surrounded by books, paintings, sculpture and in the company of writers such as Alexander Pope, Jonathon Swift and Matthew Prior as well as aristocrats and politicians.  As a child, Margaret collected pets and natural history objects and was encouraged by her father and grandfather Robert Harley to do so.  At 20 she married the Duke of Portland and they later had six children.  On her mother’s death in 1755 she inherited the estates of Welbeck in Nottinghamshire.  The Duke of Portland died in 1761 and the Duchess in 1785.

*The Portland Vase

The Portland Vase is a Roman work of the 1st century BC and is agreed to be the finest surviving Roman example of cameo glass. It is recorded as being seen in the collection of Cardinal del Monte in Italy in 1610.  It was then bought by the Barberini family where it remained for 150 years. Eventually in 1778 it was purchased by Sir William Hamilton who brought it to England and sold it to Margaret in 1784. Margaret’s third son loaned it to Wedgwood in 1790 who made it famous through limited edition copies he made in jasperware, one of which he purchased.  It was deposited in the British Museum by the 4th Duke of Portland in 1810 (where it remains). In 1845 the vase was smashed by a drunken museum visitor, necessitating skillful and painstaking restoration.  It was purchased by the British Museum from the 7th Duke of Portland in 1945.