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Hatchlands, Surrey.

The richly decorated room was the first of Adam’s great Saloons. His design assimilated his encounters with the
aesthetic expressions of Italy yet adapting to the English patron. Originally the Saloon was conceived as a Drawing
Room, now it is used as a picture gallery for the Cobbe Collection. The Cobbe Collection was begun in the Mid 18th
Century by Archbishop Cobbe with the assistance of his young Dublin Clergyman, Mathew Pilkington, who came to
work as his private secretary and vicar in 1740 in Dublin. Pilkington retired and started in a career of art-historical
criticism and research. He advised Archbishop Cobbe and his son Thomas in their picture purchases and in 1770
published the pioneering ‘Gentleman and Connoisseurs Dictionary of Painters’.
The composition focuses in on the Saloon in part as an interior subject, but emphasis is made with a still life
approach. The painting explores the relationship in expressions of styles and individual pieces that make up part of
the Cobbe Collection, which has been lent and displayed at Hatchlands by Mr Alec Cobbe to the National Trust
throughout his tenancy.

The 1622 harpsichord made by Girlano Zenti is foremost in the painting, this brings the viewer into immediate
visual connection with the interior scene. Also, the Cobbe Collection is renowned for its collection of early keyboard
instruments as music plays a fundamental role at Hatchlands. Behind the harpsichord an assembly of fine pieces are
set on a console table (circa 1750) which is original to the house and is made of Brecia marble with eagle supports of
carved wood. Set on this is a statue of Venus, a bust and Louis XV Boulle Ormalo Clock mounted by Mesnil of Par-
is (circa 1715.) Beside the table can be seen one of a pair of Colza oil lamp standards. The backdrop to the assembly
is the altarpiece ‘The Madonna Coronata’ painted by Alessandro Allori, which was formally part of a Florentine
church. The painting was documented in the Gonzaga collection in the18th c and subsequently passed through the
Colonna Borghese and Bonaparte collections before being sold by Napoleon’s mother to the Earl of Shrewsbury for
Alton Towers.
The essence of the painting celebrates beauty at the hands of the artisan, but also the dynamics of living and its
expression through music, art and faith.

The Saloon
30x 24 inches -o/p