Real people revealed in portraits and objects. Explore this exhibition with a House & garden or House, garden & farmyard ticket.

This exhibition will share stories about the fascinating lives of people associated with Chatsworth through the placement of selected portraits and objects. Focusing on the traces of lives in the house, the exhibition presents objects in new ways, demonstrating how past figures continue to resonate in our lives today.

Characters such as Bess of Hardwick with her necklace of 1000 pearls, and cellarman Edmund Marsden with a cask end carved with the Cavendish crest sit alongside contemporary figures such as the dancer and actress Adele Astaire, and a bust of the artist Lucian Freud with a set of paints left behind from an unfinished painting in the Sabine bathroom.

Throughout the house, we will share the stories of family members, servants, friends, and artists, as we invite our visitors to join us in thinking and looking at portraits, people, and the objects that they lived with, and which accompany us all into the present.