# Houghton, 1779: What a Dispersal Does to a Provenance > Walpole's pictures left England in 1779 and the collection now survives as a citation rather than a place. The 1736 inventory, not Houghton Hall, is what makes a Walpole line provable today. > The Study - 2026-08-02 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/study/walpole-houghton-and-the-1779-dispersal/ ## Key points - Walpole's 1736 manuscript inventory records 154 paintings at 10 Downing Street, 120 at Houghton, 78 at Chelsea and 66 at 16 Grosvenor Street: the collection was four addresses, not one house. - The 1779 sale to Catherine II is reported at 40,000, 40,550 and 40,555 pounds sterling in different accounts, and the number of works at 206 and 209. - The Hermitage dispersed part of what it bought: Andrew Mellon acquired twenty-one Hermitage pictures for 6,654,000 US dollars in 1930 and 1931 and gave them to the United States in 1937. - A picture Walpole's heirs sold in 1751 for a few pounds made 27.5 million pounds at hammer in 2025 because the 1736 inventory could be produced. ## The collection was four addresses and one manuscript ## Horace Walpole made his father's pictures citable ## In 1779 the nation declined to buy and Russia did not ## A dispersed collection survives as a provenance line rather than as a place ## The Hermitage dispersed it a second time ## The Canaletto shows what the 1736 inventory is now worth Houghton is the case that separates a collection from its building. The house still stands and the pictures are mostly in Saint Petersburg, yet the collection is more legible now than most that never moved, because Sir Robert's clerks listed it in 1736, his son catalogued it, Boydell engraved it and Catherine's agents receipted it. Two centuries later a Canaletto that left the family for 34 pounds could be sold for 27.5 million at hammer on the strength of a household list. Dispersal destroys collections. It does not destroy well-documented ones. ## Questions **How much did Catherine the Great actually pay for the Walpole collection?** The figure is not settled. The Hermitage states 40,000 pounds sterling for 209 works; the Tretyakov Gallery Magazine gives 40,555 pounds negotiated by James Christie; an encyclopaedia entry gives 40,550 pounds and about 206 works. Cite the range and the currency, and treat any modern equivalent as a derived and date-dependent estimate. **Does a Houghton provenance mean a picture hung at Houghton Hall?** Not necessarily. The 1736 inventory distributes the collection across four addresses, with 154 paintings at 10 Downing Street against 120 at Houghton. The Canaletto pair, for example, hung in Downing Street. A provenance line reading 'Walpole, Houghton' is a claim that the manuscript can confirm or refute. **Why can Walpole pictures be traced so much better than other eighteenth-century English collections?** Because four independent records survive and can be cross-checked: the 1736 manuscript inventory, Horace Walpole's Aedes Walpolianae, Boydell's Houghton Gallery of 129 prints published between 1774 and 1788, and the Russian purchase records of 1779. Most contemporaries left one of those at best. ## Sources - [1] State Hermitage Museum, 'Robert Walpole and His Collection'. - [2] Meer, 'Robert Walpole and His Collection' (reproducing the State Hermitage Museum exhibition text). - [3] The Tretyakov Gallery Magazine, 'The Walpole Paintings at Houghton Hall: A Brief Homecoming'. - [4] Wikipedia, 'Walpole collection'. Tertiary source, used only for the Wilkes petition of 1777 and the alternative counts; replace with the parliamentary record and the Russian purchase documents. - [5] Christie's, 'Canaletto: Venice, the Return of the Bucintoro on Ascension Day'. - [6] The Art Newspaper, 'New world record for Canaletto as view of Venice sells for 31.9m pounds', 1 July 2025. - [7] Finestre sull'Arte, 'Canaletto masterpiece sold at Christie's for 31 million pounds', reporting the 1736 Downing Street inventory figures. - [8] Wikipedia, 'Soviet sale of Hermitage paintings'. Tertiary source for the 1928-1931 sales, the Mellon total and the Raphael and van Eyck prices; replace with the National Gallery of Art curatorial files. - [9] National Gallery of Art, Washington, 'Philip, Lord Wharton' by Sir Anthony van Dyck, accession 1937.1.50, Andrew W. Mellon Collection. - [10] Houghton Hall, 'Houghton Revisited' exhibition, 17 May to 24 November 2013.