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Merton Russell-Cotes ran the smart Royal Bath Hotel in Bournemouth, and in 1897 he commissioned a clifftop villa above the sea as a birthday present for his wife Annie. The couple filled East Cliff Hall with everything they carried back from their travels, and the house itself, all stained glass, painted ceilings and Japanese rooms, is half the experience.
The art runs to grand Victorian narrative pictures and Pre-Raphaelite work, and its star is Dante Gabriel Rossetti's Venus Verticordia, a red-haired goddess among roses and honeysuckle. Alongside hang orientalist scenes and objects gathered on trips to Japan, Russia and beyond.
The Russell-Coteses gave the house and its contents to Bournemouth, and it opened as a public gallery in 1922, still arranged with their crowded Victorian taste.
