A large painting in the Cabinet Room depicts an allied fleet of Dutch East India Company ships and Chinese junks attacking pirates in the South China Sea, close to the port of Xiamen. It was painted in the Dutch Republic in 1650 by Simon de Vlieger (1601–1653) but depicts events that occurred 20 years earlier.
At that time, the Dutch were combating piracy in the region in order to secure their sea routes and colonies, having supplanted the Portuguese as the world’s leading maritime trading power. By co-operating with the Chinese, the Dutch East India Company also hoped to increase its access to their vast market. They were to be disappointed however.
Another of Windham’s impressive sea battle paintings is a depiction of the Battle of Texel by Willem van de Velde the Elder (1611–1693). Fought in 1673, this was the concluding battle of three successive wars waged between the English and the Dutch over the course of the 17th century.
The causes of the conflict included English ambitions to supplant the Dutch as the leading power in global trade. Near the North Sea island of Texel, the Dutch navy successfully defended the return of a huge shipment of spice from South East Asia from interception by the English and their French allies. Although 100 years of peace with the Dutch followed, Britain’s East India Company and its other trade monopolies substantially outcompeted their Dutch counterparts, supporting Britain’s emergence as an imperial superpower in the 18th century.
A window on the world
The works of art that Wyndham brought to Felbrigg demonstrate the sheer range of high-quality international goods available to the wealthy consumer in the middle of the eighteenth century. The rooms in which he lived announced a sophisticated taste that encompassed everything from Chinese wallpaper to Old Master paintings to tropical hardwoods.
But the elements of these cosmopolitan interiors were not obtained at an equal cost. While European works were obtained through the art market, East Asian goods came through trade routes that were secured through armed conflict and colonial expansion. Prized mahogany furniture was fashioned from timber felled by the enforced labour of enslaved, dislocated people in a land obtained through conquest.
Felbrigg is both a remarkable survival of 1750s luxury, and a precious insight into the complex, often painful, global situation that made it possible.