The Picture Gallery or ‘Long Gallery’,
remains very much as it was created by
Robert Spencer, 2nd Earl of Sunderland
(1641-1702). Educated at Oxford, he
travelled extensively on the ‘Grand Tour’
in France, Italy and Spain and afterwards
followed an active diplomatic career with
appointments to Madrid (1671), Paris
(1672), Cologne (1673), The Hague (1678).
With both discernment and the opportunity for acquiring pictures on the
continent, he was the first member of the
Spencer family to collect paintings. Many
of the fine scalloped frames in the gallery
which he had made in either Italy or
Spain, particularly those round the Lely
portraits, are known as ‘Sunderlands’.
The Picture Gallery is based on the
original Elizabethan gallery in the southwest wing of the house. It is 115 feet long,
20 feet wide and 19 feet high.
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