Design for the Decoration of the Drawing Room at Eastnor Castle, Hertfordshire

Design for the Decoration of the Drawing Room at Eastnor Castle, Hertfordshire

John Gregory Crace

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This watercolor records the redecoration of the drawing room at Eastnor Castle, a building designed by Robert Smirke in 1811. Parts of the interior were redesigned by A.W.N. Pugin In 1849-50 in a neo-Gothic style, with much of the work carried out by the London decorating firm of Crace. John Gregory Crace here shows the drawing room with a blue fan-vaulted ceiling with gilded ribs, green walls ornamented with a striped pattern, red curtains, paintings and a gothic mantlepiece and cabinet.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Design for the Decoration of the Drawing Room at Eastnor Castle, HertfordshireDesign for the Decoration of the Drawing Room at Eastnor Castle, HertfordshireDesign for the Decoration of the Drawing Room at Eastnor Castle, HertfordshireDesign for the Decoration of the Drawing Room at Eastnor Castle, HertfordshireDesign for the Decoration of the Drawing Room at Eastnor Castle, Hertfordshire

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.