The Houghton Revisited exhibition currently taking place at Houghton Hall in Norfolk provides the opportunity to see some of Robert Walpole's collection displayed in its original setting for the first time since Walpole's famous collection was sold to Catherine the Great of Russia in 1779. Like several other famous collections, the paintings in the Houghton collection were engraved and published, in an ambitious project organized by the Georgian print world's 'Commercial Maecenas' John Boydell, with the result that even after the paintings had left for Russia, they continued to exert great influence on British artists and connoisseurs in engraved form. Here we show a selection of engravings from paintings in the Walpole collection: This full-length portrait of Robert Walpole hung in his 'blue damask bed chamber', although like several of the prints in this list it is not part of the Houghton exhibition: Sir Robert Walpole, afterwards Earl of Orford....
