Strawberry Hill House & Garden is launching an appeal to raise £85,000 to secure South East View of Strawberry Hill House by Johann Heinrich Müntz. Painted between 1755 and 1758, this extraordinary view captures Horace Walpole’s Gothic villa at the very moment the Gothic Revival was being born.
Commissioned by Walpole himself, the painting is the only contemporary visual record of his first Gothic experiment.
The painting is on short-term loan in the Red Bedchamber from 30th March 2026, where it can be viewed for free with general admission.
Two generous supporters have pledged to match donations to this appeal, meaning every gift you make will go twice as far until we reach our target.
With your support, we can bring this masterpiece home permanently, where it belongs.
Johann Heinrich Müntz, South East View of Strawberry Hill House, c.1755–58. Oil on canvas.
This painting is one of only two known oil paintings of Strawberry Hill by Müntz. Its companion picture is held at the Lewis Walpole Library at Yale University. Together, these paintings constitute the earliest detailed visual records of Horace Walpole’s revolutionary architectural vision.
The canvas captures the house in its earliest Gothic form, when the building was more symmetrical, with a low service wing incorporating earlier fabric. In 1759, Walpole demolished this wing and built the Gallery and Round Tower, creating the dramatic silhouette we know today.
The Swiss artist Johann Heinrich Müntz was more than Walpole’s painter. From 1755 to 1759 he lived and worked at Strawberry Hill as Walpole’s in-house artist and designer, contributing directly to the invention of Gothic at the house.
During these formative years, Müntz produced paintings, drawings and decorative designs while working closely with Walpole on architectural ideas and technical experiments. He was not simply recording Strawberry Hill — he was helping to shape it. The house he painted was still evolving, and he was part of that evolution.
The painting is also the earliest visual record of the garden, made around ten years after Walpole began his ambitious programme of tree-planting. It includes the celebrated “theatrical shrubbery” border, an important feature of Walpole’s landscape design that has since been carefully recreated at Strawberry Hill.
What we see here is not a finished monument, but a creative work in progress — house and garden emerging together.
Johann Heinrich Müntz, A drawing of Horace Walpole, in his Library, Private Collection.
Strawberry Hill was conceived as a total work of art: architecture, interiors, landscape and collections designed to operate together as a single imaginative statement.
This painting is a cornerstone of that vision. It allows visitors to understand how Strawberry Hill evolved from Walpole’s first Gothic experiment into one of the most influential buildings of the eighteenth century, and how the Gothic Revival emerged not fully formed, but through process, revision and bold creative risk.
Painted for Horace Walpole and long kept at his London residence on Berkeley Street, this view of Strawberry Hill has never hung in the house it was created to record. Acquiring it now would bring the painting home for the first time, reuniting a formative moment in Strawberry Hill’s history with the place that inspired it.
We are seeking to raise £85,000 to secure this painting permanently for Strawberry Hill House. Two generous supporters have pledged to match donations to this appeal pound-for-pound until we reach our target, so every gift made will have double the impact.
We are grateful to Thomas Coulborn & Sons, Fine Art Dealers, whose support for this campaign reflects a shared commitment to keeping works of this importance in public hands.
If you would like to find out more about the campaign, please contact Charlotte.Savery@strawberryhillhouse.org.uk
