Alsop House Interior Decorations

dining room

 

 

The ceilings and non-decorative wall areas of the dining room and morning room have recently been painted.

The Alsop House dining room, 1890

 

 

Entrance and Stair Hall

The original entrance of the Alsop House faced High Street and was located on the northeast corner of the building. It opened into a foyer with wall paintings of moldings, vines, and a potted plant. The area now used for restrooms was formerly a library and an alcove. The staircase in the central hall, which has a glass dome skylight, was originally free-standing, supported by a single Ionic column. In 1951 the column was removed and the present enclosed area built for support. The paintings in the stairwell are similar to the classical motifs on the façade of the house. The dancing woman on the upper wall of the stair hall derives from a sculpture by Antonio Canova. Other floating figures in the stair hall are derived from engravings of the Hours by Raphael or his school, which were painted in the Vatican and subsequently destroyed. The trompe-l'oeil features of the staircase and the hall, as well as the marble floor in the conservatory, are duplicated in the American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

The Front Parlors

The wall paintings in the parlors, also oil on plaster, represent figures of the Hours, copied from prints after Raphael's paintings in the Loggia at the Vatican. The two Raphaelesque ceiling paintings represent Apollo's Chariot and the Chariot of Jupiter. These were also executed after engravings made from images in the Vatican; the Chariot of Jupiter had been published in an engraving by the Piranesi family. Similarly, the winged figures in the drawing room ceilings and other motifs derive from this source. It is likely that the artist was familiar with ancient frescoes from Pompeii; he is believed to have been German. The red borders originally included are now replaced by reinforcing steel strips, painted to resemble the original coloring, and embedded into the floor above. The ceilings literally hang from these steel strips, added for preservation and safety, as the rooms above, once bedrooms, are now offices. The small round discs embedded in the ceiling were added at crack points for strength. The gold discs along the borders of the ceiling are original and the few that were lost were simulated by the restorers.

The smaller wall designs, the birds, patterns, brazier, and Cupids are all copied after Piranesi; the butterflies and birds elsewhere were added by the artist. It is clear that the painter was knowledgeable about glazing, as the figure in the southeast corner of the parlor illustrates. Here, one can see where the artist transferred his designs to the wall by pouncing, a process by which charcoal is patted through holes in tissue paper. The undecorated areas of the parlors were found to be in fairly poor condition; the plaster was entirely gone from the wall over the northeast front fireplace. In addition, the wall was discolored in several spots due to mold spores and old wallpaper paste. In the later decades of the nineteenth century, the walls were covered, and thus preserved, by flock wallpaper.

All of the colors in these walls were based on preserved areas of the originals. There was some "antiquing" in the restoration process, but not a great deal, and only in order to give a sense of age. In representing the skies, which were repainted, watercolor was used to distinguish these areas from the original oil, so that scholars who might come to study them would be able to distinguish immediately which areas were authentic. Most of the walls were cleaned and where it was necessary, the flaking original plaster was salvaged by applying heated wax with a warm iron.

The Morning Room and Dining Room

The wall and ceiling paintings in the morning room are especially charming. The formal classicism of the other rooms is here complemented by airy perspectives and arbors in the "rural" tradition of Italian wall decoration. Perspectives of sky are seen through lattice work enlivened by foliage, flowers, birds, and insects, all of local origin, with the exception of the now-extinct Carolina Parakeet, copied from Alexander Wilson's American Ornithology. Family records indicate that Richard Alsop III had a collection of stuffed birds and was interested in ornithology. The frieze along the top of the dining room's west wall is original; the rest of the decorations were duplicated by Thaddeus Beck.

The Furniture

The majority of the furniture in the Alsop House was purchased in the 1950s, and reflects the period in which the house was built. It includes works from the English Regency, French Empire and early American periods. Among the most noteworthy English and French pieces are two yellow covered fruitwood chairs, a console table, a secretary desk, and English provincial Sheraton dining chairs and armchairs. Important American furniture includes a sofa and a dining room table, which are by Duncan Phyffe, and a secretary in the south parlor. Given by the Dietrich Foundation, Inc. (H. Richard Dietrich, Jr., B.A. Wesleyan 1960), the desk was originally owned by the Alsops. It was made by the Townsend Brothers of Newport, Rhode Island during the Revolutionary War period.

 

Sources for Alsop House pages:

 The history of the painted motifs is derived largely from research by Allyn Cox. For further research on the house and its decorations we are indebted to Samuel M. Green (Professor Emeritus, Art Department) and Dolores M. Gall. An earlier version of this text was prepared by Laura M. Edmiston (B.A. Wesleyan 1991).