Interior
On the death of Mrs. Leopold de Rothschild in 1937 the house was inherited by her son Anthony Gustav de Rothschild. It was he and his wife, the former Yvonne D'Anvers, who enlarged the house further, and are responsible for the present interiors, full of notable paintings and (unusually for a Rothschild House) a large collection of 18th century English furniture.
The ground floor contains the principal suite of large reception rooms, and while these rooms are furnished with works of art and furniture, they are low ceilinged, and, continuing the informal concept of the design, are in no way intended to be state rooms. The entrance hall is notable for its large paintings by Thomas Gainsborough, George Romney, and Joshua Reynolds and the large work by George Stubbs, "Five Mares". The dining room, now decorated with what appear to be Dutch tiles but is in fact trompe l'oeil, contains a collection of small, mainly Dutch, paintings from the 16th and 17th centuries by such artists as Aelbert Cuyp, Adrian van Ostade and Jan Steen.
The works of art continue through the common room, with its portrait of a prelate attributed to Lorenzo Lotto. The Drawing room today displays a collection of blue Chinese ceramics with examples from the Han dynasty circa 206 BC, to the Qing dynasty which lasted from 1644 until 1911. This room contains the painting of the Madonna and Child with St. John by Andrea del Sarto of 1520.
In 1936 the Billiards Room was transformed into a library to house the many volumes amassed by Anthony de Rothschild. One of the most comfortable rooms in the house, its book lined walls are only interrupted by Gainsborough's full length portrait of the Duchess of Richmond, and various other masterpieces. Standing on a console table is Tiepolo's "The Assumption of the Virgin". The room also contains furniture by Thomas Chippendale and ancient Chinese ceramics.
Read more about this topic: Ascott House
Famous quotes containing the word interior:
“Those who sit in a glass house do wrong to throw stones about them; besides, the American glass house is rather thin, it will break easily, and the interior is anything but a gainly sight.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“An absolute can only be given in an intuition, while all the rest has to do with analysis. We call intuition here the sympathy by which one is transported into the interior of an object in order to coincide with what there is unique and consequently inexpressible in it. Analysis, on the contrary, is the operation which reduces the object to elements already known.”
—Henri Bergson (1859–1941)
“Anyone with a real taste for solitude who indulges that taste encounters the dangers of any other drug-taker. The habit grows. You become an addict.... Absorbed in the visions of solitude, human beings are only interruptions. What voice can equal the voices of solitude? What sights equal the movement of a single day’s tide of light across the floor boards of one room? What drama be as continuously absorbing as the interior one?”
—Jessamyn West (1902–1984)