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Strawberry Hill House & Garden has launched an appeal to raise £85,000 to acquire South East View of Strawberry Hill House by Johann Heinrich Müntz (c.1755–58), a rare contemporary painting that captures Horace Walpole's Gothic villa at the very moment the Gothic Revival was being born.

Commissioned by Walpole himself, the painting offers an extraordinary glimpse of Strawberry Hill before its dramatic transformation of 1759, when the Gallery and Round Tower were added to create the iconic silhouette we recognise today. It is one of only two known oil paintings of the house by Müntz, whose companion view is now held at the Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University.

More than a record, the painting reveals Strawberry Hill in the process of invention. At the time it was made, the Swiss artist Johann Heinrich Müntz was living and working at the house as Walpole's artist in residence, contributing directly to its evolving architectural vision. What he depicts is not a finished monument, but a creative experiment taking shape — house and garden emerging together as a new kind of Gothic design.

The painting is currently on short-term loan and will be on display in the Red Bedchamber at Strawberry Hill House from 30 March 2026, where it can be viewed free with general admission.

Painted for 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.

Two generous supporters have pledged to match donations to the appeal pound-for-pound, meaning every contribution will go twice as far until the £85,000 target is reached.

Dr Silvia Davoli, Senior Curator, said: "Strawberry Hill was conceived as a complete work of art, where architecture, interiors, landscape and collections were designed to speak to one another. This painting is central to that vision. It is not simply a depiction of the house, but part of the creative process that shaped it. Bringing it back would restore a missing piece of that story — returning it, for the first time, to the place it was made to record."