The Newcastle Bequest

The University of Nottingham first accepted charge of the family papers of the Duke of Newcastle in 1955. They are among the country’s pre-eminent surviving family archives and are probably most familiar to historians for their value in studying British political history and colonial affairs in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The addition of the Newcastle family portraits in 1991-92 added a new dimension to the collection.
Over the centuries the Dukes of Newcastle acquired a collection of exceptional interest. The Clumber collection has been dispersed in recent times, but a significant core remained the property of the Dukes of Newcastle. The 9th Duke hoped that the family pictures which survived would be maintained by an institution able to care for and exhibit them. The bequest has made it possible to study a family’s papers in the place which also houses the family portraits and to research social history as revealed in historical portraiture, domestic letters, diaries and personal papers.
The collection of 34 items includes portraits from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries including works by Sir Godfrey Kneller, Rosalba Carriera, Sir Thomas Lawrence and George Richmond.
For further information see The Newcastles of Clumber. A Gift to the University of Nottingham. University of Nottingham Art Gallery 1992.  

 

Portrait of Charles Hope as Bacchus	Henry Fiennes Clinton Pelham-Clinton