Friday morning prior to registration for the Sasha Celebration Weekend, I decided to take Anette Grob-Hecker and Ginger Mullins on a visit to Chatsworth House a wonderful English stately home.

The present display at Chatsworth house is The Dog.

This exhibition, conceived by the Duchess of Devonshire, explores the Cavendish family’s enduring love for dogs, through paintings, drawings, sculpture, letters, photographs and contemporary art. We’ve sniffed out all of our favourite stories, capturing the idiosyncratic, faithful, endearing and playful character of man’s best friend.
Ranging from historic to present day pieces, specially selected loans from public and private collections will be presented alongside items from the Devonshire Collection, featuring everything from working dogs to woven dogs, dogs on canvas to dogs on camera and from puppets to popular culture.
Star works from Constable, Stubbs, Gainsborough and Landseer sit beside contemporary pieces by Lucian Freud, Jeff Koons, Antony Gormley, Elisabeth Frink and on the South Lawn a specially commissioned eight metre high scaffold dog created by Ben Long complete the dogs in art line-up.

Chatsworth house is amazing, so I will let the photos do most of the talking.

(Above: I had mentioned on seeing the sheep and lambs running about the estate that goats are my favourite animal and then bumped into one)

Once inside Ginger made herself at home.

Anette was very taken with the entrance hall.

(Above: a wonderful statue)

(A boy and his dog)

(Above: the chapel ceiling wonderfully painted. You cannot see in the photo, but there is a secret door to the right in the panelling. During the 2nd World war the chapel was used as a dormitory for school girls and when they heard about the secret door, there imaginations ran away with them, apparently they burst through the secret door expecting to find a secret passage, unfortunately it was a room occupied by the librarian, who was not happy about being disturbed by a bunch of school girls.)

Climbing up the stairs to another level.

 

Into the State room

A view from the window.

The music room with the fabulous 3D painted violin that hangs on the back of the door, I really found it hard to believe that it was not a real violin.

Below a wonderful painting of our Queen Elizabeth with some of her dogs.

 

The photo below just struck me as funny as to me the ape looked out of place in the setting.

(Above: I love the strategically placed thistles to stop you sitting on the chairs)

Below a modernist hall way.

Into the guest bedrooms complete with dog beds, opulence everywhere and wonderfully painted wallpaper.

(Above Ginger opted for this bed)

Another bedroom.

 

we made our way towards the exit as we needed to be back in time for registration.

We passed through the gift shop, picking out a couple of souvenirs  to take home.

We made our way back to Eastwood Hall for the Sasha Celebration weekend.

Stay tuned for the next part which is more Sasha doll related.

Thanks for looking …………………….