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The only way is to sketch a fortune which you think you can realize and then go for it bald-headed. The headaches, fears, ceaseless work and endless disappointments, all become incidents that have to be overcome and forgotten. Then Dame Fortune, wooed in such fashion, usually succumbs.
Weetman Dickinson Pearson
Weetman Dickinson Pearson, 1st Viscount Cowdray (1856-1927) was one of the great men of his age. Brought up in Bradford, he became a partner in his grandfather's building and contracting business, Samuel Pearson & Son, Ltd., in 1880. Destined for the firm from the outset, Pearson made an extensive tour of the United States in 1875-6 and in retrospect it can be seen that this experience underlay his subsequent approach to business opportunities. In 1881 he married Annie, daughter of Sir John Cass, who was a forceful personality in her own right and took a close interest in her husband's business activities, travelling with him in what many of her contemporaries would have thought the most fatiguing of circumstances. Pearson's vision, understanding of engineering and exacting attention to detail transformed the family business, long before the death of his father, George Pearson, in 1899: major schemes for waterworks, drains, railways, docks and tunnels were undertaken in almost bewildering succession, not only in this country, Malta, Egypt and the Sudan, but also in Spain, the United States (where Pearson was responsible for the Hudson River Tunnel and the East River Tunnels), Chile, and above all in Mexico, where canal and railway projects were followed by a courageous investment in oil exploration.
'THE MEMBER FOR MEXICO'
A committed Liberal, Pearson was created a Baronet in 1894 and was a Member of Parliament for Colchester from 1895 until his elevation to Baron Cowdray in 1910, and in 1917 - shortly after his elevation as a Viscount and at a crucial period in the First World War - served as President of the Air Board. His frequent absences from Westminster, however led to him being affectionately known as the 'Member for Mexico.' Pearson went into Mexico almost by accident. Having already reviewed the contract for the draining of Mexico City by the means of a Grand Canal and turned it down, he was invited to reconsider when the 29th President of Mexico, Porfirio Díaz, sent a friend to visit Pearson in New York: the latter appointed an agent to review the situation on the ground at once.
Mexico City had baffled engineers for centuries. Situated in the Valley of Mexico and lying at the bottom of a vast basin, once Lake Mexico, the city had suffered repeated flooding since 1607. It was perhaps the outward impossibility of the project that attracted Pearson - that and the fact that his American counterparts had hitherto failed to find a lasting solution to the problem. Pearson was a firm believer that the skill and ingenuity of British engineers was second to none in the world and that S. Pearson & Sons was soon to be their leading contractor. His 'bald-headed' pursuit of success reaped dividends - by 1895 Pearson had won the confidence of President Díaz and was less than a year away from the successful completion of the Grand Canal. The only delays had been caused by the difficulties of transporting materials in and out of the port of Veracruz - inevitably the Mexican Government looked to Pearson to solve the problem once again; other tenders were not even invited.
Mexico was not without its challenges for Pearson and perhaps the most significant of these was his exploration into oil. Whilst laying track upgrading the inter-ocean Tehuantepec Railway, Pearson came across one of the world's largest oil fields - the Potrero del Llano.
'The oil business is not all beer and skittlesI entered into it lightly, not realising its many problems but only feeling that oil meant a fortune and that hard work and application would bring satisfactory results'
In this letter to his son Clive of March 1908, the 'satisfactory results' were still some way off and the trials that ensued were of no small consequence; one setback included a well producing 2,000 barrels of oil a day in the San Diego district of Veracruz, which caught fire and burned for eight weeks - a loss to the tune of £1 million. But the 'Pearson touch' prevailed - in 1910 he floated the Mexican Eagle Petroleum Company on the stock market, maintaining the majority of the shares but safe-guarding his investments by ensuring government backing - 'a Mexican business should be partly owned by Mexicans.' By the time it was taken over by the Royal Dutch Petroleum Company (now Royal Dutch Shell) in 1919, Cowdray had told his wife that 'fine living' and 'occasional extravagances' were to follow.
Pearson's personal legacy in Mexico should not be underestimated. His friendship with the 29th President of Mexico played a key role in the expansion of his professional interests in the country, but it was also a friendship that outlived his involvement there - upon Díaz's death in exile in Paris, his widow wrote to Cowdray 'only a really exceptional soul is capable of understanding another also exceptional one.' It is fitting that a full-length portrait of Díaz features in the sale (lot 377) alongside the stunning and rare hand-coloured engraved book detailing the orchids and wild flowers of Mexico (lot 376).
RISING FORTUNES
The Pearson's changing circumstances were marked by their move to London, where they lived first on Camden Hill and finally, from 1898, at 16 Carlton House Terrace. Referred to as 'Carlton' by Lady Pearson, this was used for political entertaining at a time when the Liberal Party had few such establishments to draw on, the Pearsons relaxing their strictly teetotal rules for the benefit of Mr. Asquith. In 1894 Sir Weetman purchased Paddockhurst in Sussex, reconstructing and enlarging the mansion built by the vendor, Mr. Whitehead. This acquisition of property went hand in hand with a burgeoning interest in building an art collection and it is interesting to note that at a time when many families were beginning to move their collections to the country, the Pearsons would place a substantial proportion of their finest pictures and works of art at Carlton House Terrace. Their first acquisitions were recorded in 1904 and there followed a sequence of discriminating portrait commissions: Sargent portrayed Annie Pearson in 1906 and her husband a year later (figs. 1 and 2), while Sir William Nicholson's whole length of Lady Pearson was exhibited in 1910 (lot 247); like the Sargents it would be placed at Carlton House Terrace, while Orpen's portraits would ultimately go North.
Much has been written about Lady Cowdray. Sargent clearly sensed her strength and her granddaughter, Mrs Smiley, was an acute witness: 'She saw herself as founding a dynasty. This could explain why she decided that certain members of her family-and indeed of her husband's-must be dropped. This dropping process was done with a ruthlessness which may have appalled plants more sensitive than herself.' As John Jolliffe, in his biography of the Cowdrays' second son, Clive Pearson, observed: 'No shadow of egalitarianism ever crossed the sunlit plateau to which they had ascended.... False modesty never reared its head' - and indeed there was nothing modest about their subsequent acquisitions.
Houses, pictures and works of art were very much part of a dynastic programme and both Paddockhurst and Carlton were retained in 1908 when Pearson purchased the historic Cowdray estate, which has ever since remained the seat of the Viscounts Cowdray.
COWDRAY
'Cowdray. I settled the terms of purchase yesterday. Price £340,000. It is a big venture, but even if the oil does not prosper and we do not become more heavily involved than our present commitment we cannot, I think, be accused of undue rashness in buying the property.'
The purchase included the splendid ruins of the great Tudor house, as well as its Victorian successor, which had been built by the Earls of Egmont: Pearson intended to replace this, referring to his investment in oil in Mexico as 'the trade that I am-in my dreams-hoping will build the new Cowdray Castle and furnish it with one year's earnings.' War, and perhaps wiser counsels, would prevail: and the Cowdrays contented themselves with altering the Victorian house.
A 'princely estate' by Pearson's own admission, Cowdray was steeped in history. Dating from the early 16th century, Cowdray was purchased from Sir David Owen by Sir William Fitzwilliam, a favourite of King Henry VIII, who obtained licence in 1532 to crenellate walls and towers on the site that had been hitherto known as La Coudreye. In 1542 it passed to Sir William's half-brother, Anthony Mary Browne, whose first son would become 1st Viscount Montague. King Henry VIII visited Cowdray on a number of occasions, as did Edward VI in 1552 (when he is reported to have complained of the food being too rich) - whilst Queen Elizabeth I's visit on her Royal Progress of 1591 was later depicted by James Pryde's oil (lot 251). Arguably one of the finest Tudor houses in England, it was devastated by fire in 1793. Little is known of the original interior at Cowdray, save for some 18th century watercolours by an Samuel Hieronymous Grimm, which document the Buck Hall (so named as the vaulted structure was hung with stags and hunting trophies) and one of six large murals, depicting the coronation of Edward VI, which adorned the original Dining Parlour. The present Buck Hall is the only part of the Tudor Cowdray recreated in the Victorian structure built by the Earl of Egmont in 1878, and the mural is thankfully immortalized in a pair of painted leather screens, circa 1900, that now stand in the present-day Buck Hall (lot 117).
THE COWDRAY'S AS COLLECTORS
In the privately printed Cowdray Park Catalogue of 1919, Lady Cowdray is credited with having 'brought together' the collection which, by that time, already included the vast majority of pictures, furniture and works of art offered here. All of the items listed were marked with inventory numbers - with furniture these appear as applied ivorine labels. The Cowdrays' taste in pictures was aptly demonstrated by their earliest recorded purchases, of 1904 from Agnew's, with whom they were to have a fruitful relationship: a fine Gainsborough held to be of the Duke of York from the Huth sale; the distinguished Reynolds of John Hely-Hutchinson, later 2nd Earl of Donoughmore; and Romney's Lady Isabella Erskine which cost the formidable sum of £17,000, then far in excess of any auction record. The first would in time go to Cowdray, the second to Dunecht, while the Romney was sent to Paddockhurst.
The purchases of 1904 were followed by a Raeburn in 1905 and two Hoppners a year later. Then there was it seems a lull until after the acquisition of Cowdray. The purchase of Colin's portrait of the great Liberal statesman Richard Cobden in 1911 (lot 372) was a political statement: this went to Cowdray. So did the Hudson of Lord Egmont, ancestor of the builder of the Victorian Cowdray House. This came in 1912. Two other notable acquisitions of that year from Agnew's, the beautiful Lawrence of the future Duchess of Bedford - of whose liaison with the young Landseer one presumes Lady Cowdray was ignorant - at £2,420 and the Sir Joshua of Miss Gresley at £14,410, went to Carlton House Terrace, while less expensive portraits by Raeburn and John Russell were sent to Cowdray. So did a picture that brought a new element to the collection, the portrait of Henry, Prince of Wales given to van Somer (lot 155); while the Cowdrays themselves did not buy other pictures of the kind, both their surviving sons would do so, the most significant of these being the four superlative Tudor portraits from Compton Verney acquired by Harold Pearson from the celebrated Willoughby de Broke sale of 1921 (lots 309-312). The pace of acquisition for Cowdray accelerated in 1913, with the first two of what was to become a significant group of portraits by Cornelis Jonson (lots 145-150), a characteristic Verspronck and a quartet of large portraits that were evidently needed for the Buck Hall, including those given to Kneller of King William III and Queen Mary from the Fife Collection (lot 68), the fine portrait of the playwright Duke of Buckingham and Normanby (lot 69), and the excellent Wissing then identified as of his wife, but actually of Frances Thynne, Lady Worsley (lot 70). A portrait of King Charles I (lot 292) was taken in, evidently to complement that of his brother, Henry, and balanced by that of the Parliamentarian, Colonel William Strode (lot 151).
It is understandable that the outbreak of the Great War interrupted this pattern of shopping. Lord Cowdray made a significant contribution to the war effort and had other priorities. In 1916 Lady Cowdray acquired Eric Kennington's The Kensingtons at Leventie, now in the Imperial War Museum. The sale here in 1917 of the antiquities from Deepdene collected by Thomas Hope stirred Lord Cowdray's 'lively interest in archaeology' which developed on a tour of Greece and Italy in 1899, when he was forcefully impressed by the courage of Roman engineering. Agnew's bought a number of lots on his behalf, including a group of Roman imperial portraits, a statue of Athena and a Roman copy of an archaic statue of a female for Paddockhurst: four of the portrait busts are in the Royal Ontario Museum, and the Athena, which cost 6,800 guineas, is in the Los Angeles County Museum. But the other statue, which cost 3,400 guineas, was retained by Clive Pearson and is at Parham.
Allied with this passionate pursuit of historic English portraits, antiquities, arms and armour and silver, the Cowdrays simultaneously chose to 'fit up' their houses with all modern comforts and conveniences, turning to the distinguished decorating firms of Morant and Lenygon & Co. of 31 Burlington Street. The latter was commissioned to provide both upholstered furniture and lighting, often based on historic models - such as the carved oak chandeliers for the Buck Hall after those created for the Queen's Gallery at Kensington Palace circa 1690; ormolu lanterns after the model in the Marble Vestibule at the Palace of Versailles; or, as for Lord Leverhulme, silver-plated chandeliers at Dunecht after those in the Collonade at Knole, Kent (lots 63, 64, 425, 483). But arguably the most intriguing commission at Cowdray came in the form of the so-called 'Mexican' suite of silver furniture (lots 379-381 and 385). Made by the London firm of Comyns for The Silver Bedroom at Cowdray, it copies the celebrated suite from the King's Rooms at Knole, which had been published by Country Life in 1912. Interestingly, Percy Macquoid's celebrated Dictionary of English Furniture illustrated the suite, a copy of which was in the 1st Viscount's library (lot 1193). The suite is dated 1920-21, by which time the 1st Viscount had already made Dunecht his principal residence and Cowdray had passed to his eldest son Harold. Almost certainly commissioned by the 1st Viscount as a gift for his eldest son, the source of the raw material was undoubtedly Mexico - Cowdray had often received payments for contractual work undertaken in Mexico and Southern America in the form of silver bullion - at one time having 50 tons of it in London!
DUNECHT
The Pearson's desire for an estate north of the border had been satisfied with the purchase of Dunecht House in Aberdeenshire in 1909. Pearson had already in 1906 taken a three year lease with an option to purchase Dunecht, the huge mansion extended by George Edward Street, the architect of the Law Courts, for the 25th Earl of Crawford to house his prodigious library. Conceived by Lord Crawford in an Italico-Lombardo style that perfectly complemented his remarkable collection of early Italian gold ground pictures, Dunecht was not for the faint-hearted, its enormous scale considered a perfect essay in 'architectural pre-Raphaelitism.' As Mrs. Lindsay commented in 1878, 'The first sight of the house is astonishing! It is like a great university - with its chapel, its towers, its dormitories, its refectories!' Lord Cowdray gave Dunecht with its 9,000 acres to his wife and, with the help of Aston Webb between 1913-20 - and subsequently William Kelly from 1924-32 - Annie Cowdray succeeded in transforming and domesticating Dunecht into a much-loved house that, from 1919, became their principal seat.
The Dunecht purchase was followed by that of other estates nearby, including the Forest of Birse, the Raemoir and Skene estates and of a real but ruined castle, Dunnottar, which was duly repaired in the same exemplary fashion as the Tudor Cowdray and opened to the public. Its visitor's book, signed by King George V and Queen Mary in 1931, is included as lot 1205. To purchase and restore major ruins was in itself something of a statement at a time when the aristocratic inheritors of numerous buildings of the kind were shuffling the responsibility for maintaining these to the Office of Works. Nor was their interest confined to the ancient buildings they themselves acquired - Lord Cowdray generously paid for the reroofing of St. George's Chapel, Windsor.
Dunecht, like Cowdray, was decorated with a similar emphasis on tradition allied to modern comfort - William and Mary marquetry and vernacular oak alongside modern upholstered furnishings by Morant and Co. in the finest damasks and cut-velvets. The 100 ft. Long Gallery also reflected the eclectic tastes that no doubt emerged as a result of their extensive trading interests worldwide - 18th century Chinese silk hangings lined and hung by Morant & Co. (lot 450), Chinese carpets and Court vestments alongside an 18th Century Chinese white Jade prunus vase, while nearby stood four 'Grand Tour' porphyry columns (lots 246 and 427).
Perhaps the most fascinating additions to Dunecht were the result of Lady Cowdray's adventurous forays into the nascent modern art world. In the early 1890s a friend of her sister, William Rothenstein, who was then at the Slade, had designed her Christmas cards and Lady Pearson developed a serious interest in contemporary artists. In 1906 she bought Nicholson's portrait of Mrs Beerbohm: she left this to the National Portrait Gallery. She also acquired works by Conder, Connard, Ricketts and, later, Augustus John, and by 1910 was already in touch with James Pryde, of whom she became an assiduous and perceptive patron.
Lady Cowdray's first acquisition of Pryde's work came in 1910. Both the title of the work - Construction - and the subject must have appealed. The painting was inspired by both the Melville Monument, Edinburgh and by The Duke of York's Column - the latter just a stone's throw from the Cowdray's London home. In the summer of 1912 she purchased three works from Pryde's one man show at the Baillie Gallery, including the evocative landscape entitled The Deserted Garden (lot 252). There followed a series of visits by Pryde to Dunecht and an impressive hang of over 20 pictures planned for the soaring barrel-vaulted library - ranging from landscapes to religious subjects and a sequence of pictures devoted to portraying the Cowdray ruins (lots 249-250). Lady Cowdray's patronage of Pryde culminated in the magnificent lunette entitled The Madonna of the Ruins, which drew together the prevailing themes of the works hung below it. Dunecht's collection of works by Pryde is unsurpassed - and includes many of the artist's masterpieces that display both the depth of his imagination and the range of his pictorial powers. Happily, Lady Cowdray's love of contemporary art was also shared by her younger sister Gertrude (later Mrs. Thomas Kinnell) who gave her the outstanding and reflective Orpen self-portrait in 1927 (lot 253), the year of the 1st Viscount's death.
THE FOUNDATION OF A DYNASTY: THE PEARSON LEGACY
The architecture of Dunecht has been described as 'a rare and potent example of strength of conviction allied to enormous wealth'; these same words might equally well be applied to describe the Cowdrays themselves. And although Lady Cowdray exercised a powerful, and indeed at times overpowering, influence on all her children, she succeeded in establishing a veritable dynasty that flourishes to this day. Whilst Lord Cowdray's innovative spirit drives the financial powerhouse that is the Pearson Group - the Cowdray's enduring legacy is the salvation of so many of Great Britain's architectural treasures, from Cowdray to Dunnotar, Castle Fraser to Dunecht and Parham to Blair Castle, to name but a few.
A PAIR OF BLACK-PAINTED METAL WALL LANTERNS
20TH CENTURY
Details
A PAIR OF BLACK-PAINTED METAL WALL LANTERNS
20TH CENTURY
Each with thistle cresting and mirrored backplate
50 in. (127 cm.) high (2)
20TH CENTURY
Each with thistle cresting and mirrored backplate
50 in. (127 cm.) high (2)
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