TAKE A TURN | May 4th 2008

"The Marquess of Worcester's dappled grey stallion, with Worcester House beyond", Christie's

Niall Hobhouse made his name dealing in Anglo-Indian art. Now the contents of his magnificent Palladian home are for sale at Christie's, writes Fiammetta Rocco, Books and Arts editor of The Economist ...

Hadspen is a golden Palladian house that sits beneath an escarpment in north Somerset between Wincanton and Castle Cary. It had been in the rich, mercantile Hobhouse family for 200 years when Niall Hobhouse inherited it in 1982. He could have contented himself, as many had done before him, with rearranging the inherited furniture and giving the walls a fresh coat of paint.

But Mr Hobhouse is a self-taught man, and like many men for whom learning is a way of life, his guiding principles are to stand at a distance, to observe, to plan and to make sense of the world around him by thinking things through for himself.

As a boy he applied those principles to his studies. He did so again when he became an art dealer in London in the 1980s. The art world was then expanding quickly, and new areas of interest were opening up all the time, pioneered by independent-minded enthusiasts who cared little for convention.

Mr Hobhouse, fascinated by the cultural exchange between Europe and India, quickly made his name dealing in Anglo-Indian art. It helped that he had a natural eye. He pounced on Thomas Daniell's views of Calcutta from the 1780s, with their soft lines and delicate tones, and early watercolours by Indian artists, such as Bhawani Das, of their country's flora and fauna. These had been commissioned in the late 1770s and early 1780s by Lady Impey, the wife of Bengal's chief justice, and were an exotic natural version of that 18th-century European passion, the cabinet of curiosities.

As material stacked up in the basement of his gallery in Duke Street, St James's, Mr Hobhouse mounted exhibition after exhibition devoted to subjects hitherto largely unexplored, such as Indian painting for the British and the Lucknow menagerie of Claude Martin, much of which had never been displayed before.

When Mr Hobhouse took over Hadspen after his father died, he threw himself with the same exuberance into rearranging the gardens and interiors. The house was a muddle. The main rooms did not work; the entrance was dim and ill-proportioned and it was full of the family's possessions, "the good, the polite, the poor and the unusual."

Within a decade that changed. A Roman decorator, Federico Forguet, and a young Soanian architect, Ptolemy Dean, helped Mr Hobhouse create a succession of memorable rooms filled with unusual and distinctive art.

A series of five intricately dressed Javanese courtiers painted in the 1830s stand in the entrance hall, in all their gold and finery, seemingly waiting to be called. And the dining room is lined with a collection of designs by a Parisian silversmith--tazzas, tureens, samovars and wine coolers, all dating from the eve of the French Revolution.

Ever on the move, Mr Hobhouse has now decided to sell the lot. He wants to simplify his life, rent out the main house at Hadspen and save on storage charges. He also wants to focus entirely on his latest passion, architecture.

This is no ordinary country-house sale. Every piece has been carefully chosen, and there is no tat.

One of the more interesting items is a vast 17th-century painting, seven feet long, of a dappled grey horse (pictured above). Probably commissioned by Henry Somerset, the first Marquess of Worcester, it features a façade of Worcester House in the background. The horse is small and has a slightly shifty look, which gives the painting character.

Diego Velazquez and Anthony Van Dyck, who became King Charles I's court painter in 1632, made equestrian portraits immensely fashionable in the 17th century, but theirs invariably showed military and political leaders in the saddle; the horse was never the star.

That changed when Arabian horses came to Britain. Breeders began commissioning portraits of the steeds themselves, creating a whole new genre of painting. The picture of the Marquess of Worcester's stallion is dated 1647; it is probably the second-oldest horse painting in Britain.

John Wootton and later George Stubbs would become the most fashionable English horse-painters. Wootton was page in his youth to Lady Anne Somerset, daughter of the first Duke of Beaufort, who encouraged Wootton to pursue his passion for painting. Wootton would probably have seen this picture in their collection.

The painting was consigned to auction by the Somerset family in 1987, where Mr Hobhouse bought it. Rolled-up and dirty, it impressed him enough that he paid £85,000 ($168,000) for it. The picture was offered again for auction in 2000, but failed to sell, possibly because the estimate, at £200,000-300,000 was too ambitious.

Now Mr Hobhouse has had it cleaned, and is offering it in a handsome contemporary auricular frame, an English copy of an earlier Sansovino frame from Florence. The estimate this time amounts to what he paid for it 20 years ago. At that price, it would be a bargain--handsome, impressive and with a touch of history.

"The Marquess of Worcester's dappled grey stallion, with Worcester House beyond" will be sold by Christie's as part of "West-East: The Niall Hobhouse Collection" in London on May 22nd. Lot 250, estimate £70,000-100,000.

(*Fiammetta Rocco writes the Art.view column on economist.com, and is the author of "The Miraculous Fever-tree".)