Johann Heinrich Müntz (1727-98) The South East view of Strawberry Hill House, Twickenham

Johann Heinrich Müntz (1727-98) The South East view of Strawberry Hill House, Twickenham.

Oil on canvas in a carved, giltwood frame.
Painted between 1755-1757.

Provenance: Commissioned by Horace Walpole. English Private Collection: Countess Bathurst (1927-2018).

Strawberry Hill House was created by Horace Walpole (1717-1797), 4th Earl of Orford and son of the first British Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole. Horace Walpole was an art historian, collector, and writer of the first English Gothic novel The Castle of Otranto (1764). In 1747 Walpole leased a property at Strawberry Hill, which he went on to buy in 1749. His passion for the Gothic spanned his years at Strawberry Hill House and he added turrets, battlements and cloisters inspired by buildings such as Canterbury Cathedral and Westminster Abbey. The house was the first to be rebuilt in this style despite the fact its origins and style were not medieval. It was a key source of the Gothic revival in English architecture. This painting shows the house between 1755-7 before the construction of The Gallery and the Round Tower.

Johann Heinrich Müntz was an architect, designer and landscape painter. He worked across Europe in Spain, Italy, France, and the Netherlands as well as in Britain. He was employed by Walpole at Strawberry Hill for four years, arriving in the summer of 1755. His first commission, however, was to travel to The Vyne, home of Walpole’s close friend and collaborator John Chute. He painted several views of The Vyne which remain in the house today http://www.nationaltrustcollections.org.uk/object/719369 and http://www.nationaltrustcollections.org.uk/object/719439

The suggestion of autumn in the brown leaves to the right hand side of the Strawberry Hill composition indicates that it was painted on the artist’s return from the Vyne in autumn 1755 or perhaps in the same season the following year. The pair to the painting shows the view from the South with the Thames and Twickenham beyond. It can now be found in the Lewis Walpole Library Collection: https://findit.library.yale.edu/catalog/digcoll:4791342 and https://findit.library.yale.edu/catalog/digcoll:4791351

Until the re-emergence of this painting there was only a pencil and water colour sketch which may have been copied from this painting, to indicate a record of the buildings that existed before the construction of The Gallery and The Round Tower.

Bibliography:
Michael Snodin, Horace Walpole’s Strawberry Hill, London: Yale University Press, 2009

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