These four wingchairs were recently reupholstered, and when the old fabric was removed, our curator and conservator found a surprise. What were thought to be 19th- or early 20th-century reproductions of a distinct 17th-century style of armchair, turned out to be mid 20th-century copies that are so poorly constructed under the upholstery, they might have been intended as props for the stage or a movie set. Certainly they look great in and are appropriately scaled for the Great Hall at Rough Point, where they add a bit of whimsy and flair. Perhaps that is all that mattered to Doris Duke as well!

Doris Duke sat for this portrait in 1923, the year that Rough Point was being renovated for the Duke Family by Philadelphia architect Horace Trumbauer. The artist, John Da Costa, had been commissioned around the same time to paint formal portraits of her father, the tobacco and energy tycoon James B. Duke, and grandfather, Washington Duke, after whom Duke University was renamed in the 1920s.

This pair of tables is in the style of later 18th-century French Louis XVI wall consoles, but they were made in the 19th century to match the scale and opulence of Gilded Age mansions. Their design and construction, with gilt metal decoration applied to wrought iron bases, would have been a perfect match for a grand marble entry hall with a sweeping stairway balustrade made from the same materials. Originally part of the furnishings of the New York mansion where Doris Duke grew up, the tables have been a fixture of the Solarium at Rough Point since the late 1950s.

This and a second Oudry work of the same size that also hangs on the second floor landing at Rough Point were recently discovered to be preparatory sketches for paintings commissioned by Samuel Jacques Bernard, the comte de Coubert (1686-1753), for the dining room of his grand hôtel on the rue du Bac in Paris, built between 1740 and 1742. The full-scale paintings were removed in 1887 when the hôtel was dismantled and its decorations sold. They are now in the Museés des arts décoratifs, Strasbourg.

From 1912 to 1957, this grand portrait of Doris Duke's mother, Nanaline Holt Inman Duke (1871-1962), hung in the library of the Duke family's residence in New York City at 1 East 78th Street. It was moved to Newport in the late 1950s when Doris Duke gave the New York house to New York University to house its graduate art history program, and it has hung in the stairway of Rough Point ever since, althought.

The portrait was made in 1907 around the time that Nanaline, the widow of wealthy Atlanta-based cotton merchant, William Inman, married tobacco and energy tycoon James Buchanan Duke. At that time she had a twelve-year old son, Walker Inman (1894-1955), and in 1912, her only daughter, Doris, was born.