Revisiting the past at Houghton Hall

There seems to be a trend in museums at the moment for reconstructing lost collections. I wrote last year about the Ashmolean's reconstruction of the collection lost on the Westmoreland in the eighteenth century, and various research projects are seeking to reconstruct divided collections, notably Sir Hans Sloane's collections that founded the British Museum. Most feted has been the return this year of the famous painting collection of Sir Robert Walpole to Houghton Hall in Norfolk. The paintings were sold in 1779 to Catherine the Great, and as a collection are now one of the treasures of the Hermitage.

Curator Thierry Morel has completed an astounding feat in returning the most famous collection of paintings in the eighteenth century to its original locations. Thus, this year (probably for one time only) visitors can view the paintings hung as they would have been in the 1740s, when Walpole fell from power and retreated from London politics to Houghton. The collection is eclectic and of mixed quality based on modern tastes, but impressive in its range and extent. It includes gems by Velazquez, Rembrandt, Rubens, Kneller, Poussin, and a notable group of paintings by Carlo Maratta, an Italian painter famous in Walpole's day but now 'yet to be revived' according to the catalogue. The sheer profusion, densely hung in the rooms at Houghton is spectacular. What particularly appealed to me is how the curators have used the opportunity of the hang to write a guiding booklet which highlights the house itself as a work of art, tying the paintings into Kent's extraordinary interiors and Walpole's other treasures. I saw other visitors really engaging with the decor.

But, I was also struck by how the exhibition mythologises the past. The collection is impressive but not that notable in its own right when divorced from its history linked to Walpole and Empress Catherine. So why are visitors flocking to Houghton? The tale that the return has been possible because the house was shut up 'for a hundred years' soon after the paintings left seemed particularly to appeal to other visitors. It is like a fairy tale, or perhaps a Bond-style tale of getting our own back from the Russians. Also appealing is the story that the exhibition has been made possible by finding a manuscript inventory of the collection in the back of a wardrobe. A tale worthy of Narnia. I'm interested how such features make 'Revisiting' Houghton appeal to such a range of visitors - an exhibition that, lets face it for most visitors, largely features fairly obscure paintings owned by a fairly obscure British figure.