Edwardian Gilded Age 'Portraits’
Edwardian Gilded Age (1901 – 1910)
The Victorian era ended on 22nd January 1901 with the death of the monarch, Queen Victoria at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight.
The later period of the 64 year reign associated with the sovereigns mourning of the death of Prince Albert in 1861.
Edward VII accession to the throne symbolised a new era with Buckingham Palace refurbished and decorated and Osborne House and its estate gifted to the nation in 1902.
A new era synonymous with 'optimism’; highlighted by the conversion to electricity in houses and streets, automobiles and the Wright brothers aviation displays in 1908.
Portraits of Alvary and Cynthia
Put on display, the 'young master’ at Lotherton Hall and the 'princess-little English Rose’ at Craignish Castle. Both portraits belong to the Edwardian Gilded Age of 'optimism’ at these residences.
Frederick R.T.Trench – Gascoigne and Laura Gwendolen inherited Lotherton Hall and Craignish Castle in 1893 and showed themselves to be a celebrity 'power couple’ by a series of commissions at these residences.
Lotherton Hall
Officially chosen as the 'Gascoigne family residence’ with the disbanding of Parlington Hall in 1905 (1)
Re-modelled as a modern Country House (including conversion to electricity)
Professional gardening friendships involved in the design of the 'Edwardian Garden’.
Craignish Castle
The 1904 Portrait, The Celtic Room and Mackenzie Garden commissions are worthy of the description 'in the manner of Trench-Gascoigne’.
At the Scottish seat the Gascoigne family enjoyed the long summer days of the Edwardian Gilded Age (2).
(see page: Audacious Commissions)
(1) Inheriting Parlington Hall at Aberford in 1905 and disbanding the ancestral seat of the 'Gascoignes’ in the same year. The ancestral portraits put on display at the modernised Country House.
Old Colonel: Frederick Charles Trench – Gascoigne
'his death in June 1905 shook the Aberford community by
it’s suddenness. Colonel Gascoigne junior, enjoying his
annual visit to the family’s Scottish estate, Craignish Castle,
was called back at once’
’Lotherton Hall Remembered’ (Page 4) by Daru Rooke.
Published in Leeds Art Fund Calendar Issue: No.108 1991
(2) 'Every summer the Gascoignes sailed their yacht up the coast to Inverewe where Osgood Mackenzie had begun his garden on a bare peninsula in the 1860’s’.
The Edwardian Garden at Lotherton Hall (Page 6) by Mette Eggen
Published in Leeds Art Fund Calendar Issue: No. 104 1989