My last holiday trip was not very far to the south, to Petworth. I'd walked round the park before, and I and Ms Formerly Aldgate had even ventured into the house, but it had been frightfully overrun and coming home rather than fighting our way around was the right decision as we weren't paying for it. This time, of course, I was, but on a dull Epiphany day only a handful of visitors were making their way around, dwarfed by the scale of the place.
Petworth is unusual as you get a clear impression of life below stairs in the kitchen wing, a range of grandiose rooms basically designed as backdrops for the Egremonts' art collection, and not much else. The family themselves vanish in the face of the paintings and the sculpture. The house is always associated with Turner, who often stayed there, but even he doesn't feature very prominently. I spotted one little Turner work, high up on a dark wall, depicting Jessica from The Merchant of Venice and described by one of the artist's early biographers: 'Only a great man dare paint something so bad'. Instead it's as though the house has its own personality, or series of personalities, separate from any of the people who have lived there - the clear Marble Hall, the umbrageous Great Staircase, the Chapel panelled in black wood, the musty North Gallery, as well as the low and slightly resentful kitchen wing.
I look instead for strange nooks and details, and find them in the background figures of John Leslie's Sancho Panza and the Duchess and the horrified face caught in the midst of Blake's Day of Judgement.
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