There is a general collection of mainly nineteenth-century British art , with some Dutch paintings .sx The Wolverhampton Art Gallery opened in 1884 , its classical building paid for by Philip Horsman .sx The contents of the gallery , or money to buy them , came from other citizens , whose generosity never really caught up with the grandeur of the architecture .sx Initially the collection was of nineteenth-century British art .sx Later , eighteenth-century works were acquired , and more recently an attempt has been made to form a collection of contemporary art , including works by Andy Warhol , Lichtenstein , Rosenquist and Caulfield .sx Though the county of West Midlands is largely an urban sprawl , made up of Birmingham , Coventry , Walsall , Wolverhampton , Dudley and West Bromwich , it does have three houses of interest .sx Wightwick Manor , due west of Walsall , has a collection which includes a number of important Pre-Raphaelite works .sx Aston Hall , owned by the City of Birmingham , has a collection which includes paintings related to the Holte family , previous owners , though their own collection was sold in 1817 .sx It is maintained as an eighteenth-century period house .sx The third and most important country house is Hagley Hall .sx This eighteenth-century house , with its rococo plasterwork , Soho tapestries and good period furniture , reflects the fact that it was largely the creation of one man , the First Lord Lyttelton ( 1709-73) .sx He was a politician of some distinction , serving briefly as Chancellor of the Exchequer .sx It was after he was raised to the peerage , in 1756 , that he pulled down the Elizabethan structure and built the present house in a style which derives its essential elegance from Colen Campbell's designs for Houghton Hall in Norfolk .sx Lyttelton wrote that " Athenian " Stuart " has engaged to paint me a Flora and four pretty little Zephyrs , in my drawing room ceiling " ; there is some possibility that Cipriani had a hand in the work .sx Throughout the house the period is reflected in the detail , Stuart also designing such things as candelabra .sx The collection sustains the eighteenth-century atmosphere with interesting portraits , including an early Richard Wilson of Admiral Sir Thomas Smith , painted before the artist went to Rome .sx The First Lord Lyttelton is the subject of an austerely formal portrait by Benjamin West , giving no hint of his diverse interests and gregarious nature .sx He was a friend of Pope , who designed an urn in the grounds , of James Thomson , whose poem , The Seasons , contains a lengthy passage praising Hagley , and Horace Walpole , who wrote :sx " I wore out my eyes with gazing , my feet with climbing and my Tongue and vocabulary with commending .sx " It is a familiar form of fatigue .sx Earlier works of art in the house , notably the Van Dyck and Lely portraits , came to the collection as a result of the friendship of the Worcester royalist , Sir Thomas Lyttelton , with General Brouncker , whose portrait by Lely hangs in the Gallery , at the entrance to the Van Dyck Room .sx Brouncker was a founder-member of the Royal Society , and its president for seventeen years .sx He bequeathed works to Sir Thomas Lyttelton , uncle to the First Lord Lyttelton , whose father's marriage to Viscount Cobham's sister was responsible for bringing further acquisitions to the house .sx Many of the seventeenth-century paintings have carved mahogany and boxwood frames , some carved by Thomas Johnson .sx One room celebrates Van Dyck and his school and includes The Children of Charles I and The Second Earl of Carlisle .sx COLLECTIONS IN DERBYSHIRE .sx Joseph Wright no longer needs the addition to his name 'of Derby' , which until recently was a vaguely pejorative term indicating the limited range of his reputation .sx In recent years he has been increasingly recognised for his talent and range as a painter , a process crowned in 1984 , when the National Gallery paid pounds1 .sx 3 million for his portrait group , Mr and Mrs Thomas Coltman .sx Fittingly , the Derby Art Gallery has a number of his works , including some of the most famous .sx The county , however , apart from the Derby City Art Gallery , is poorly provided with public collections , a situation rectified by the number of fine country house collections open to the public .sx HARDWICK HALL ( NT ) .sx Hardwick Hall is the most remarkable Elizabethan house in England .sx The towering influence there of the woman who built it , Elizabeth Hardwick , Countess of Shrewsbury , dominates any visit .sx Virtually the whole of the collection reflects the history of the house , its first owner and her illustrious heirs , and the events which swirled around them , mainly during the turbulent reigns of Henry VIII , Edward VI , Mary I , Elizabeth I and James I. Elizabeth Hardwick was the daughter and co-heiress of John Hardwick , a modest Derbyshire squire .sx Parts of his original house still exist in the Old Hall .sx She married , in succession , Robert Barley , Sir William Cavendish , who bought the Chatsworth estate , Sir William St Loe , and George Talbot , Sixth Earl of Shrewsbury .sx She outlived her last husband , from whom she had separated after an irreconcilable quarrel .sx By the time of his death , in 1590 , her combined wealth gave her an income estimated at pounds60,000 a year .sx She had already settled at Hardwick and begun building the hall .sx After her death her descendants , the Earls and Dukes of Devonshire , chose to make Chatsworth their principal home , and Hardwick Hall was little used .sx With the aid of sensitive nineteenth-century restoration work , it appears much as it was in the 1590s , with many of the original contents , including splendid tapestries , painted wall hangings , and embroideries .sx These , though outside the strict terms of reference of this book , are the decorative glories of the house .sx No comparable collection exists anywhere .sx Patchwork seems a derogatory term for some of the hangings , in all probability made from the rich copes and vestments taken at the time of the dissolution of the monasteries .sx The greater part of this work is recorded in Bess's inventory of 1601 .sx The collection of portraits hangs in the Long Gallery , over the tapestries , with smaller ones in the Dining Room , above the panelling .sx Works by , or attributed to , Mytens , Larkin , Wissing , Dahl and Lockey record the associations between Bess and the families of her last three husbands , as well as Mary , Queen of Scots , who was for some fifteen and a half years entrusted to the care of the Earl and Countess of Shrewsbury .sx Lady Arabella Stuart , Bess's granddaughter , and a claimant to the throne of England , is represented as a child in a portrait by an unknown artist , hanging in the Dining Room .sx A portrait of her as a young girl hangs in the Long Gallery , together with a group near to the High Great Chamber , of Bess , and two of her husbands .sx At the other end of the Long Gallery is a portrait of Queen Elizabeth , dating from about 1592 and showing her in a heavily embroidered dress .sx Perhaps not inappropriately , there also hangs in the same room a portrait of the political philosopher Thomas Hobbes , who was tutor to the Second and Third Earls of Devonshire , and who died at Hardwick in 1679 .sx His final utterance was :sx " I am about to take my last voyage , a great leap in the dark .sx " It is a sombre comment on the multitudinous ambitions with which he is surrounded .sx SUDBURY HALL ( NT ) .sx The collection at Sudbury Hall reflects the period of the house , the second half of the seventeenth century .sx It was started in the year of Charles II's return to the throne , and is a highly individual example of the period , with copious , even extravagant decoration , including fine carvings , mainly the work of Edward Pierce , though including examples of Grinling Gibbons as well , plasterwork by Robert Bradbury and James Pettifer , and murals by Louis Laguerre .sx The building was begun immediately after George Vernon succeeded to the family inheritance , in 1660 .sx From that date there appear regular payments in family account books to painters , notably to John Michael Wright , the London-born portraitist , responsible for a series at Sudbury Hall .sx Michael Wright , as he is generally known since he allowed the name John to lapse , was the son of a London tailor , and was apprenticed in 1636 , at the age of nineteen , to the Scottish painter George Jamesone .sx He worked in Rome , and became a Catholic convert , to the grief of his parents .sx Though in style and ability he might well have rivalled Lely , he seems to have had neither the ambition nor the temperament to do so .sx He is represented at Sudbury Hall by the impressive oval portraits of his principal patron there , George Vernon , Vernon's first of three wives , Margaret Onley , her parents Edward Onley and Margaret Onley , Robert Shirley , First Earl Ferrers , and at least four other portraits .sx The Michael Wright portraits are in their original 'Sunderland' frames .sx Other Restoration painters represented in the collection include John Riley , Gerhard Soest , Michael Dahl , the little-known William Sheppard's portrait of the much-painted playwright Thomas Killigrew , and Jan Griffier's View of the South Front of Sudbury and its Original Formal Garden .sx It was painted in 1681 , one of the earliest such views of an English country house in its setting , and a work of considerable architectural and horticultural interest .sx The formal gardens were done away with in the eighteenth century .sx Louis Laguerre's work includes Juno and the Peacock , decorating the Great Staircase , and a mural contained within a plaster frame to appear as a painting , An Allegory of Industry and Idleness , which represents the rewards of the former , a cornucopia , and those of the latter , a bunch of thorns .sx Early eighteenth-century portraits include works by Hudson , Kneller , Richardson and Enoch Seeman .sx Of a much later period are the dramatic examples of Thomas Lawrence's work , his full-length portraits of Edward Vernon , Archbishop of York , and The Third Lord Vernon , his elder brother .sx CHATSWORTH HOUSE .sx Chatsworth House contains one of the world's great private collections .sx Its paintings and sculpture span several centuries ; it contains fine English family portraits , Old Master paintings , neo-classical sculpture , splendid late seventeenth - and early eighteenth-century murals , and an exquisite collection of drawings .sx And , unlike so many of the great collections , modern acquisitions are continually being made .sx It has , in addition , the finest setting of any house in England , wonderfully laid-out gardens , and furniture and applied arts generally of high order .sx The First Duke of Devonshire was responsible for the present house ( with extensive additions made in the nineteenth century by the Sixth Duke) .sx He commissioned painted rooms from Louis Laguerre , Antonio Verrio , and then , in the final phase of the building of the house , from James Thornhill .sx Originally , few paintings were hung , the house being mainly panelled , with tapestry decorations .sx Some early easel pictures were in the collection , among them Vouet's Allegory of Peace .sx The Second Duke was the real creator of the collection .sx He had a passion for drawings which he indulged at the dispersal of the Lely and Lankrink collections .sx To these he added Italian and Dutch drawings which had belonged to N. A. Flinck , the son of Rembrandt's pupil , Govaert Flinck .sx He also bought Claude Lorraine's Liber Veritatis , now in the British Museum , one of a number of former Chatsworth treasures since acquired by the nation .sx He was also responsible for the lifesize Holbein cartoon of Henry VIII which now greets one on the top floor of the National Portrait Gallery .sx In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries many of the major works of art which are now at Chatsworth were in the family's London home , Devonshire House , in Piccadilly .sx In the mid-eighteenth century , by his marriage to Charlotte Boyle , the daughter and heiress of the Third Earl of Burlington , one of the great patrons and collectors of that period , the Fourth Duke extended the collection substantially .sx Charlotte inherited two great London properties , Burlington House , also in Piccadilly , and Chiswick House , ten miles to the west near the River Thames .sx Both built by her father , they were filled with collections of fine art which included works by Rembrandt , Vel a zquez , Ricci and others , and a spectacular collection of drawings , among them Inigo Jones's collection of architectural drawings by Palladio , and his own drawings for masques .sx Two of the three London houses remain .sx