NRF promotes and invests in the architectural heritage of the Newport community, the traditional building trades, and Doris Duke’s fine and decorative arts collections, for the enjoyment, education and inspiration of all.
As a leader in the preservation of early American architecture, NRF supports research and education in areas directly related to its collections and issues of critical concern to the field of historic preservation.
Tour Doris Duke’s art-filled mansion and enjoy panoramic ocean views from the extensive grounds, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted. Open late March to November.
Experience the only museum in the world specializing in 18th-century Newport furniture and related decorative arts. Open late May to October.
Explore 40 acres of open space, a tribute to the agrarian heritage of Aquidneck Island. The site is open daily from dawn to dusk for public enjoyment.
Newport Restoration Foundation holds one of the largest collections of period architecture owned by a single organization anywhere in the United States.
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The Yellow Room presents a contrast to the English Manorial style of the Great Hall. The Duke family displayed period appropriate art in keeping with the classical design elements of the room. Doris added her own touches to the Yellow Room—pairing new acquisitions with her parents’ collection. Her additions include the Rococo gilt wood double doors, and the parquet de Versailles floor, which continues into the Music Room. Doris originally installed the 18th-century oak flooring at Shangri La, her Hawaiian home, in 1938, but in 1973, she had it removed and shipped to Newport for installation at Rough Point.
Louis XVI carved, gilded, and polychromed armchair stamped Falconet
Portrait of Thomas Freeman, Jr., Esq. by Hoare
Nymph Attributed to Clodion
Portrait of Charles Oldfield Bowles by Hoppner
Carved and Gilded Rococo Double Doors
Portrait of Lady Fitzroy, nee Mundy by Hoppner
This armchair is part of a set of five pieces purchased by Doris Duke in 1960 that, according to the auction catalogue, came from the collection of the Duchesse de Montmorency at the Chateau of Valencay in the Loire Valley. Made at the beginning of the Louis XVI period, this piece displays some Italian characteristics, but is marked with the name of Falconet, a royal cabinetmaker in Paris. The painted and gilded surfaces are original. The embroidered yellow silk upholstery dates to the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century and is an amazing survival from this period.
This portrait was a purchase of Doris Duke's father from the dealer Knoedler & Co. in New York in November 1924.
Charles Oldfield Bowles (1785-1862) was the son of an amateur painter and musician Oldfield Bowles (1739-1810) of North Aston, Oxfordshire. This was the first of five John Hoppner paintings owned by James B. Duke. He purchased it in 1908 not long after his marriage in 1907 to Nanaline Holt Inman, a widower from Macon, Georgia, who had a son, Walker, of about the same age as the sitter when Hoppner captured his likeness.
This pair of double doors (only one set shown here) and another pair just like them originally adorned the Golden Gallery in the Palazzo Carrega-Cataldi, now the Chamber of Commerce in Genoa. They were purchased in Italy and brought to New York by the architect Stanford White in the 1890s. One pair, now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Rogers Fund, 1991.307a, b), stayed with White until his death in 1906. The Rough Point pair were destined for the ballroom of the Fifth Avenue mansion of William C. Whitney, which White was renovating at the time. Doris Duke bought the doors at the sale of the contents of another Newport mansion, Bois Dore, in 1977. Just as they were used in the Whitney Mansion, Duke used the doors in Rough Point as freestanding screens. One thing she changed, however, was the orientation of the hinges, leaving one pair of doors (the pair you see here) misaligned.
Doris Duke’s parents purchased this Hoppner painting in 1923 to add to their collection of other Hoppner portraits (two in this room and two on the Main Staircase).
