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ROMANTIC VIEW BY A YOUNG LADY OF THE JANE AUSTEN PERIOD

Item Description

Watercolour. 24.5 x 17.75 inches.

Notes

This watercolour shows Herstmonceux Castle as a romantic ruin. The castle, whose brick construction is not evident from this painting, is surrounded by wooded hills and there is a group of deer by a hollow tree in the right foreground.
Herstmonceux Castle, East Sussex, was rebuilt by Sir Roger Fiennes, a royal official in the household of King Henry VI, as a sumptuous country residence, with a pseudo-defensive facade. The interior was dismantled in 1777 to build a manor house nearby and the castle remained a picturesque ruin (as depicted here) until it was reconstructed as a residence, 1913-33. It provided a library and offices for the Royal Observatory, located on this site, 1957-88, and since 1994 it has been an International Study Centre for Queen's University, Ontario.
It is possible that the watercolour was painted by Jane Elizabeth Curteis (died unmarried, 1820), second daughter of Edward Jeremiah Curteis (1762-1835), MP for Sussex, 1820-1830 of Windmill Place, near Battle. He may have rented Herstmonceux Castle from its owner, John Gillan, M.P and certainly his son, Herbert Barrett Curteis (1793-1847) purchased it outright in 1846.
This painting has been extracted from an album used by several generations of the family of Thomas Law Hodges at his properties of Hemsted and Jennings, near Maidstone. They had intermarried into many of the other local landed families and were in the habit of visiting each other's houses and estates, including Herstmonceux. Hodges was Liberal MP for Kent from 1830-32 and for West Kent from 1832 until the dissolution of Parliament in 1841; he was again elected in 1847 and sat until defeated in 1852. He died 14 May 1857. Hodges is listed in Pigott's Directory for 1840 as living in Benenden; Hemsted House was subsequently sold and demolished by its new owner, Gathorne Hardy, later Lord Cranbrook and replaced by a new building which is the basis for Benenden School, now one of the top private girl's schools in the country.
A romantic landscape view of Herstmonceux Castle as interpreted by a young lady of the Jane Austen period.