Hutton Hall album, 1865-1890

Contains drawings and watercolors by Lady Mary W. Pease, many concerning the family's Hutton Hall estate. The watercolors are done in a confident, accomplished hand. She seems to have had a particular talent for observation, composition, color, and in the handling of her paints. The works represent a close knowledge of the family home, record the style of décor that the Peases used, document family outings close by and further away (especially to Scotland), and show two other Pease properties. It includes still lifes of domestic items like cooking pots and utensils, botanical studies, and designs for wallpaper patterns. This album demonstrates Lady Mary’s interest in her home and the way in which the home itself was a sort of canvas on which she expressed herself, as a prosperous Victorian wife. Hutton Hall was designed for Joseph Whitwell Pease in 1868 by architect Alfred Waterhouse, who is perhaps best known for his work in designing the Natural History Museum in London. Waterhouse was raised in a Quaker family and received many commissions to design homes for prominent Quaker families in the North of England. Some of his very trademark elements are the terra cotta and cream colored brick construction, and the Gothic stylizing that can be seen in Hutton Hall. Hutton Hall had its own railroad station on a line that ran from Middlesborough to Guisborough, an extension of the original Stockton and Darlington Railway, established to carry more of the mineral freight from mines to ports in the area. Both of these towns were significantly developed by the Pease industrial enterprises.

It is not clear whether Lady Mary assembled this album herself or whether it was put together by another family member. Someone labeled these pieces in the twentieth century, long after her death, and it’s possible that the physical album dates from the Victorian era. So, in a way, the idea of the “Hutton Hall Album” as a cohesive unit may not have been Lady Mary’s exactly, although the number of paintings that are in it and their subject matter certainly shows us that the years, places, experiences depicted in the album are all sort of unified by the Hall, and by the period of time that the Peases occupied this house.