THE ROTHSCHILDS

Over the past three years I have much enjoyed overseeing our involvement with Exbury House, especially as my family have some modest connections with the Rothschilds stretching back eighty years.

During the Second World War, my grandmother Edith Viney worked alongside Dorothy de Rothschild in the Women’s Voluntary Service in Aylesbury. At that time Dorothy and her husband James (known to their friends as Dolly and Jimmy) were chatelains of Waddesdon Manor, the magnificent estate in the Vale of Aylesbury built by Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild in the late 19th century and my grandfather Colonel Oscar Viney got to know them both reasonably well when he was High Sheriff and a Deputy-Lieutenant of Buckinghamshire. From time to time the four of them played bridge together.

Then half a century ago, as a callow youth, I spent a very enjoyable and educational eighteen months working at Waddesdon, which by then was owned by the National Trust, starting as a general dogsbody and ending up - much to my surprise considering my lack of experience - as a guide.

2 | WOOLLEY & WALLIS With its magnificent collection of furniture, paintings and works of art, Waddesdon gave me a wonderful opportunity to begin to develop my eye. At the time scholarly tomes about the collection were in the process of being written so I was fortunate enough to meet some of the academic giants of the day including Sir Geoffrey de Bellaigue (Furniture), Svend Eriksen (Sèvres Porcelain), Sir Ellis Waterhouse (Pictures) as well as the now infamous Anthony Blunt who at the time was Keeper of the Queen’s Pictures, Director of the Courtauld Institute and overall editor of the Waddesdon books and who in 1979 was exposed as a former Soviet spy.

In those days Dorothy de Rothschild was living nearby at Eythrope and from time to time she used to appear unannounced at the house and mingle anonymously with the public, always keen to ensure that the commendably high Rothschild standards were being maintained. I recall her as a diminutive figure (she was then in her 70s) with alert inquisitive eyes and a ready smile. When I left Waddesdon to begin my career in the auction world she sent me a charming letter of thanks for my work. Happy days indeed.

Exbury House was purchased by Lionel de Rothschild in 1919 and has remained in the family ever since.

On behalf of the Exbury House Trustees, we are delighted to be selling a selection of the contents of the house in upcoming sales throughout the spring and summer.

The consignment of pictures, works of art and furniture make up around 85 lots that come to Woolley & Wallis thanks to a decision to rearrange parts of the interior at Exbury, a seat of the Rothschilds since 1919.

Previously the estate of the historian William Mitford and then Lord Forster, a one-time Governor-General of Australia, by the time Lionel Nathan de Rothschild (1882-1942) acquired Exbury, the 18th century house was all but derelict, and he had it remodelled in the late 1920s.

The legacy of its military occupation throughout the war meant that both house and gardens had to be restored once more, this time under the direction of Lionel’s son, Edmund (1916-2009), who opened the gardens to the public in 1955.

Edmund was also an art collector, but it is to another Rothschild that a number of the notable highlights consigned to Woolley & Wallis may be attributed. These heirlooms from Exbury entered the family via Alfred de Rothschild (1842-1918), a director of the Bank of England by the age

of 26 and Lionel’s uncle. In 1879 on the death of his father, Alfred had inherited the 1,400-acre Halton estate in Buckinghamshire, where he promptly built a sumptuous house in the style of a French chateau, and it was from here that these choice lots emanate.