In the twentieth century Firle Place became the setting for an art collection of international importance, when the 6th Viscount Gage’s marriage brought the Cowper Collection with it.
The Cowper Collection was assembled by the 3rd Earl Cowper who had also inherited the Earl of Granthan’s collection of Dutch pictures, that included the group portrait by Van Dyck of the Count of Nassau and his family, now hanging in the Great Hall. Earl Cowper, whose portrait by Zoffany hangs in the Long Gallery, lived in Florence from 1759 where he became one of the greatest collectors of his day, forming an outstanding collection of old master pictures that included paintings by Raphael, Fra Bartolommeo, Domenico Puligo, Carlo Dolci and Jacopo Pontormo. Amongst the contemporary artists he patronized were Johann Zoffany, Anton Raphael Mengs and Igmazio Spinnazzi. His younger son, the 5th Earl, rebuilt the family’s Hertfordshire seat at Panshanger in 1799 and added a great gallery to receive his father’s pictures twenty years later. He had married Emily Lamb, daughter of the 1st Earl Melbourne in 1805, and on her death in 1869 their grandson, the 7th Earl, inherited the Lamb family heirlooms, including paintings by Reynolds and Teniers, the “Panshanger cabinets” and the Melbourne Sèvres dessert service.
All of these works of art are now at Firle. The Grenfell Collection arrived at Firle in 1954 and comprised French furniture and important Dutch and English paintings, including the large Philips de Koninck, formerly in the collection of Horace Walpole, which now hangs in the dining room. The last accession to the collection at Firle arrived in 1999 on long-term loan from the heirs of Lady Salmond, Imogen’s sister. This part of the Cowper Collection includes the outstanding Pietra Dura tables and Cowper family portraits.
