In the sixteenth century, the north bank of the Thames between London and Westminster was a favoured site for the mansions of the nobility. In 1539, Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, obtained a grant of land at “Chester Place, outside Temple Bar, London” from King Henry VIII. When the boy-king Edward VI came to the throne in 1547, Seymour became Duke of Somerset and Lord Protector. About 1549 he pulled down an old Inn of Chancery and other houses that stood on the site and began to build himself a truly imposing residence. It was a two storey house built around a quadrangle with a gateway rising to three stories and was one of the earliest examples of Renaissance architecture in England. It is not known who designed the building. Before it was finished, however, Somerset created too many enemies for himself in the Council. In the struggle for power he was overthrown and in 1552 and was executed at Tower Hill. “Somerset Place” then came into the possession of the Crown. The future Queen Elizabeth I lived there during the reign of her half-sister, Queen Mary I. The process of completion and improvement was slow and costly. As late as 1598 Stow refers to it as “yet unfinished”.
In the late 20th century the building was reinvigorated as a centre for the visual arts. The first institution to move in was the Courtauld Institute of Art, including the Courtauld Gallery, which has an important collection of old master and impressionist paintings. In the late 1990s the main courtyard ceased to be a civil service carpark, and the main terrace overlooking the Thames was refurbished and opened to the public, these alterations being overseen by the leading conservation architects Donald Insall & Associates. A visitor centre featuring audiovisual displays on the history of the building; the gilded state barge of the Lord Mayor of the City of London; and a shop and café were opened in the wing overlooking the river. The Gilbert Collection of decorative arts, and the Hermitage Rooms, which stage exhibitions of items loaned from the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, moved into the same area. The last Hermitage exhibition took place in 2007 and the Gilbert Collection galleries closed in 2008; the collection moved into new galleries at the Victoria and Albert Museum in June 2009. Somerset House now puts on a programme of art exhibitions drawing on various sources.
[caption id="attachment_241787" align="aligncenter" width="455"] Caspar David Friedrich by Gerhard von Kügelgen[/caption][responsivevoice_button voice="UK English Female" buttontext="Listen to this Post"]Caspar David Friedrich was a German Romantic landscape painter, generally considered the most i...
