Petworth Paintings

There were scores (hundreds?) to choose from, some not very easily photographed...here's a not quite random sample...

Nice Gainsborough landscape

Turner's Hulks in the Tamar

Turner's Cockermouth Castle

His Starkey House and Lake Cheshire

Vicki and I have looked at many Turners and
have always thought that, great as he was in
so many respects, he just couldn't do a
portrait that was not hysterically laughable--
even the tiniest dot of a face; this is his
Jessica, The Merchant of Venice, Act II,
Scene V, done in 1830; one newspaper said
"it looks like a lady getting out of a large
mustard pot," and Turner's earliest biographer
wrote "none but a great man dare have
painted anything so bad"; yes, but we do
all know what Turner Yellow is

William Blake's Last Judgment

Jan Matsys

Titian

Bosch's Wise Men's Offerings

Rogier van der Weyden

Teniers' The Gallery of Archduke Leopold

There may be a couple score of van Dykes at Petworth,
mostly portraits of family members and friends, and
ancestors; this is the one I liked best, his Henry Percy,
9th Earl of  Northumberland; aka "the Wizard Earl'; he
had an MA from Oxford, dabbled in alchemy; also did time
in the Tower; not a characteristic van Dyke, but still the
work of a great master

Turner lived at Petworth for two years, a guest of the Family,
and did many paintings of the estate; among these are a
number of water colors of the interior, such as the above
item, which served to guide the restoration of the galleries to
their later 18th-early 19th century form

Claude Gellee, aka Claude Lorrain, Landscape with Jacob
and Laban; Lorrain was one of Turner's idols; a parody of
this painting in 1814 cost Turner relations with his patron
at Petworth for some 13 years; alas, Turner was sort of like
that...