An extraordinary group of country houses owned, built or renovated by Jews features in a new photography exhibition running until spring 2025.
The display of more than 20 works by world renowned photographer Hélène Binet features nine houses, two mausoleums and a synagogue, including Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire and the gothic castle of Strawberry Hill House in Twickenham, both of which are hosting the exhibit.
It also includes images of Villa Kérylos on the Côte d’Azur and Villa Tugendhat in the Czech city of Brno.
The photography show was inspired by new book The Jewish Country Houses, which sheds new light on a previously overlooked category of country houses owned, renovated, and at times built by Jews and individuals of Jewish descent.
PHOTO-HELENE-BINET-Strawberry-Hill
Waddesdon Manor was built at the end of the 19th century by Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild (1839-1898) in the style of a French 16th-century château. Baron Ferdinand was an inspired collector, and the house was designed to showcase his exceptional collection of English portraits and Dutch 17th-century paintings, French 18th-century furniture, Sèvres porcelain and other decorative arts.
Pic: Exhibition at Strawberry Hill. H Nogueira.
Strawberry Hill was created by renowned writer Horace Walpole (1717-1797) and was later owned by Frances, Countess Waldegrave (1821-1879), whose father John Braham was an internationally famous Jewish opera singer; and Herbert Stern, 1st Baron Michelham (1851-1919), who belonged to a European Jewish dynasty of bankers.
A spokesperson for the exhibition describes country houses as “powerful symbols of national identity, evoking the glamorous world of the landowning aristocracy. Jewish country houses tell a more complex story of prejudice and integration, difference and connection.”
With many of the houses having had spectacular art collections and gardens and some set as stages for lavish entertaining, the spokesperson added: “A few are now museums of international importance; many more are hidden treasures: all were beloved homes that bear witness to the remarkable achievements of newly emancipated Jews across Europe – and to a dream of belonging that mostly came to a brutal end with the Holocaust.”
Hélène Binet says: “Photography can do something that architecture cannot: it can be displaced; it can be brought together on a wall or in a book, creating a dialogue that is imaginary and personal. These photographs explore the meeting point between the early dream for the house, and the literal vision of that house shaped by inhabiting. Through photography, I work to combine these two visions and to communicate this to an audience.”
Waddesdon curator and The Jewish Country Houses co-editor Juliet Carey says: “Binet recaptures something of a world now distant from our own and teases out the identity and material nature of each place in searching and beautiful ways.”
Strawberry Hill curator Silvia Davoli says “Hélène Binet’s photographs are revealing; her refined gaze and unusual perspectives transport us back in time to when these houses were places of life and memory.”
Davoli tells Jewish News that Jewish people being able to purchase land and build country houses, not only in the UK but across Europe “was a highly symbolic moment when a people whose lives had been marked by restrictions and constant movement could finally put down roots and participate in a country’s political life. In the UK particularly, country houses hold greater political and art-historical significance than in other European nations.”
She adds that many houses that were owned, renovated, or built by Jewish families “have historically avoided using the word ‘Jewish’ or highlighting any connections to their Jewish heritage, particularly those open to the public. Calling Strawberry Hill a “Jewish Country House” is deliberately provocative – Strawberry Hill obviously isn’t strictly a Jewish country house, but the Jewish story within its multilayered history makes it, among many other things, a Jewish country house too.”
She tells Jewish News that her favourite image from the exhibition is of the cabinet at Strawberry Hill with its stars on the ceiling; “this little closet, not visible to the public, shows how Lady Waldegrave associated the medieval period with blue vaults decorated with golden stars – a visual concept that became popular after the 18th century and into the 19th century. One wonders whether Walpole would have approved of this interpretation – perhaps he might have! More generally, what I love about Helene’s photography is her ability to capture that detail, that fragment which, like a Proustian madeleine, takes us back to when these people lived in, used, and loved these houses.”
- The exhibition can be seen at Strawberry Hill until 8 January 2025, and then at Waddesdon Manor from 19 March to 22 June 2025.
- Jewish Country Houses is written and edited by Dr Juliet Carey, Senior Curator at Waddesdon Manor and Professor Abigail Green, Professor of Modern European History at Brasenose College Oxford with photography by Hèlene Binet.
