In yesterday’s post we were in the Private Chapel of St James at Great Packington and found no sculpture worth mentioning. Actually there are two recumbent plaster images succinctly dismissed by Pevsner as “rather bad”.
However, two things are of interest. First the altarpiece by John Rigaud; not Hyacinthe Rigaud. What a funny name. His name at birth was Catalan: Jyacintho that became Hyacinthe in French. He is known for his portraits painted at the Court of Louis XIV but we are looking at John Rigaud’s altarpiece and the two Rigauds are unrelated.
The IHS sign, in clouds, is being worshipped by angels. An Italianate composition but then John Rigaud was born in Turin and learnt to paint in Italy before coming to London in 1771, aged twenty-nine. Although he exhibited 155 pictures at the Royal Academy he was in demand to execute decorative paintings for town and country houses including Packington Hall. The main room in the north wing, the drawing room, the Little Library and the Pompeian Room all have work by Rigaud. In fact, while working on the ceiling of the Little Library in 1810 he died from apoplexy and is buried in the churchyard.
Secondly, something older than the church, the organ, built in the middle of the 18th century for one Charles Jennens who lived at Gopsall Hall in Leicestershire. Jennens was a patron of the arts and a friend of Handel. He asked Handel for advice on the construction of his organ:
“I here under specify my opinion of an organ which I think will answer the ends you propose, being everything that is necessary for a good grand organ, without reedstops, which I have omitted, because they are continually wanting to be tuned, which in the country is very inconvenient, and should it remain useless on that account it would still be very expensive, although that may not be your consideration. I very well approve of Mr Bridge, who is without any objection a very good organ builder, and I shall willingly, when he has finished it, give you my opinion of it.”
In fact the organ was built by Thomas Parker who also supplied one to the Foundling Hospital, founded by Thomas Coram in Bloomsbury in 1739, where Handel’s Messiah had its first London performance. Jennens died in 1773 leaving the organ to his cousin, the 3rd Earl of Aylesford who put it in the music room at Packington Hall. His son moved it to the chapel where it remains today.
Usually the organ case is locked but James Miller arranged for us to hear a short Recital; good for the digestion after lunch.
