Taxidermy In The Country House
Victoria Comstock-Kershaw is a postgraduate masters student in the Art Market and History of Collecting program at the University of Buckingham. Her dissertation focused on the role of taxidermy in British country houses and museums during the long nineteenth century. She also contributes as an arts writer for FETCH London.
Taxidermy has long held a significant role in country houses, serving as a versatile symbol that reflects the diverse facets of its collectors' lives. It stands as proof of their worldly travels, showcases their hunting prowess, highlights their scientific knowledge, and embodies their sentimental connections to their pets. However, taxidermy’s role in the British country house underwent its most radical transformation over the long nineteenth century.
The start of the long nineteenth century saw taxidermy in country homes as an almost purely scientific endeavour. The long shadow of the Enlightenment and its scientific ethos, combined with the technological discoveries surrounding preservative chemicals of the previous century, meant that the vast majority of species being stuffed were being shown in museums. The few private collectors who brought taxidermy into their homes were usually attempting to emulate this empirical atmosphere, from the types of species collected (usually exotic or unusual birds from the Americas, a habit adopted by the post-Linnaean European scientific community) to the locations they were displayed in (studies and offices being the most common, reflecting the Wunderkammer or cabinet of curiosity conventions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries).
Hallway. 1895. West Dean Park, Singleton, Chichester. Photograph by Bedford Lemere.
However, by the early 1900s, these upper-class collectors (usually male) were facing a barrage of criticisms, as the image of the 'foppish botanist,' the affluent yet effeminate scientific thinker, began permeating the British cultural consciousness. In an effort to combat this stereotype, upper-class British collectors began to emulate ‘scientific heroes’ like explorer Alexander von Humbolt or naturalist Charles Lyell, figures who partook in challenging field trips and highlighted the importance of physical fitness. Taxidermy, then, became an ideal conduit for the male aristocrat to prove his salt as a natural philosopher who was very much immersed within the tangible natural world.
This shift was exacerbated by anxieties surrounding class. The Victorian desire to solidify the relationship between themselves and their land intensified as urban families used their new-found industrial wealth to move to the countryside, effectively creating a nouveau riche class of families occupying spaces previously thought untouchable by the landed aristocracy. The ‘contest for control’ resulting from this middle-class expansion led both new and old countryside inhabitants to re-evaluate how they could symbolically and systematically assert their connection to their properties, especially in regards to decorating their homes. The intrinsically natural visual nature of stuffed animals ‘grounded’ the landed gentry of the early Victorian era not only to highly scientific museums they were so often exhibited in, but to the natural world around them, both local and exotic. As the British Empire expanded, so too did hunting rooms and taxidermy collections in country houses, further solidifying taxidermy’s role as an expression of Victorian status and identity.
Hermann Plouquet. Reineke Fuchs (Reynard the Fox), ca. 1850, Hermann Ploucquet. Taxidermy and mixed media. Private collection. Photo courtesy of Pat Morris.
The middle of the century in particular established taxidermy as a commercial and decorative object. The Great Exhibition of 1851 introduced taxidermy dioramas (sculptural scenes of small animals playfully anthropomorphised while acting out everyday scenes or children’s fables) to the British public. Darwin’s publication of On the Origin of Species in 1859 would further the Victorians’ personal connection to animals and their representations in general culture. Taxidermy as clothing, especially hats, became hugely popular across Europe and taxidermy was included in many manuals for young women to be counted as the sort of skill that any well-rounded young girl should have, just as sewing or watercolour painting would have been. Females employed as taxidermists also rose in popularity, with certain areas counting almost a third of their taxidermists as women.
Wilhelm Von Kaulbach, Reynard the Fox, 1846, engraving. Both of these illustrations are directly copied in Plouquet’s work.
Taxidermy in country homes moved from the library to the drawing room, a decidedly more ‘feminine’ area. Women were the primary purchasers of taxidermy at the Great Exhibition, and late Victorian ‘at home’ periodicals suggest this pattern continued well into the later half of the century: photographs of country homes owned and decorated by women often include the presence of stuffed animals. This was partly due to women’s newly-found consumer power, but also a result of the rise in Orientalist decor and the desire to appear as unique as possible in a post-industrial society. Taxidermy's new role as a communicator of their creators' individuality is one intrinsically linked to not only to the unique nature of taxidermy itself, but of broader societal anxieties during an age marked by mass production, and standardised goods.
A far cry from the early Victorian treatment of taxidermy as a uniquely masculine and scientific endeavour, taxidermy ended up as an almost purely decorative venture: stuffed animals had shifted from proof of scientific prowess, to symbol of social status and imperial dominion, to aesthetic enhancement of the domestic sphere. Taxidermy in British country houses was essentially an externalisation of Victorian anxieties surrounding loss of identity; whether this be that of the ‘serious’ natural philosophy of the early century, the ‘landed’ status of aristocracy of the mid-century, or the ‘unique’ decorator of the late century.
Claude-Marie Ferrier, The Great Exhibition, 1851: Display of Fur and Taxidermy, salted paper print, 15.5 cm x 20.6 cm, Royal Trust Collection, RCIN 2800052
Top photo: Left: Miss Kate Fearing Strong (later Mrs. Arthur Welman), 1883, New York, cabinet card, 30.3 cm × 46.5 cm, Museum of the City of New York, F2012.58.1460. Strong wears a stuffed cat on her head and a collar with the word ‘pussy’.