THE GRAND RECEPTION ROOM

The Grand Reception Room was conceived specifically for King George IV to receive his guests. It made a magnificent background for the reception which was later a prologue to the Banquet in the Waterloo Chamber. Ironically Wyatville worked in the French style for this room. Not, of course, the Empire style so characteristic of the Napoleonic period but harking back to the Bourbons of the era of Louis XV and indeed a bronze statue of that monarch adorns the room along with bronze busts of Marshals Conde and Turenne, distinguished French soldiers of the Thirty Years War, and Cardinal Richelieu. Perhaps this was a celebration of the brief restoration of the dynasty in the person of Louis XVIII, George IV's cousin since they both descended from James I, the former through Charles I's daughter 'Minette'. Perhaps to emphasise this connexion and the international brotherhood of monarchy there is a bust of Charles I in this room after Le Sueur.

Wyatville designed the room specially to display the 18th century Gobelin tapestries, part of a set acquired by the King and which depict the legends of Jason.

Tsar Nicholas I gave the great vase in green Malachite marble to Queen Victoria.