Exhibitions and Special Collections

Exhibitions

By popular request our 2011 exhibition about Miss Bridget Talbot, continues in 2012.

The exhibition features Miss Talbot, the last owner of Kiplin Hall, and charts her life from her privileged, aristocratic birth and comfortable country house lifestyle, through the many campaigns and causes for which she fought.

Special Collections

In addition to our general collection of material relating to the history of Kiplin and its use as a family home for four centuries, we have some special collections relating to particular periods in the house's history or the interests of some of the people who lived in it.

The collections which we currently highlight are those relating the the Arts and Crafts Movement, a special interest of Mrs Beatrice Carpenter and material linked to G.F. Watts, amongst whose close female friends and supporters were the beautiful Ladies Pembroke, Brownlow and Lothian, sisters of Walter Cecil Talbot, owner of Kiplin Hall from 1868 - 1904.

The Hall has recently been given an outstanding painting of Scorton Village Green and this will form the basis of a local history collection.

One Woman’s Fight: Miss Bridget Talbot, Last Owner of Kiplin Hall

This year marks the fortieth anniversary of the death of Miss Bridget Talbot. Curator of Kiplin Hall, Dawn Webster, has created an exhibition in her memory, ‘One Woman’s Fight: Miss Bridget Talbot – last owner of Kiplin Hall’, which charts Miss Talbot’s life from her privileged, aristocratic birth and comfortable country house lifestyle, through the many campaigns and causes for which she fought.

From her time as a nurse on the Austrian-Italian Front during the First World War to her final battle to save her beloved Kiplin Hall, this fascinating exhibition reveals the colourful life of a feisty lady, who died aged 86 in 1971.

New Displays

This year, on show for the first time in the Long Gallery, is a large, highly decorated, leather screen, dating from about 1750. The screen was made in England in the Chinese style and is full of delightfully animated figures within fanciful, pagoda-style buildings. It was in very poor condition and has been painstakingly repaired by a leather conservator in Nottingham, after a century or more of decay.

An Italian Palace through a Colonnade

Experts say the artist was a follower of Viviano Codazzi (1604-70) and Mico Spadaro (1609/10-1675)

The Friends of Kiplin Hall have kindly funded the cleaning and conservation of a 17thcentury oil painting, An Italian Palace through a Colonnade, which hangs in the Ground Floor Drawing Room. Light now streams between the columns and in the foreground figures have appeared which have not been visible for many years. The painting hangs alongside family portraits and works from the Venetian School, brought to England at the time of the Grand Tour.

The Piazza di San Marco, Venice, during a Carnival
by the Venetian artist, Luca Carlevarijs

A dramatic oil painting, The Piazza di San Marco, Venice, during a Carnival, by the Venetian artist, Luca Carlevarijs has returned to Kiplin Hall. The painting has been away on display in the major exhibition, Venice: Canaletto and His Rivals, which was held in the National Gallery in London, before moving earlier this year to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.