Sir Ernest Cassel, a ‘Jew of taste’

Abstract ‘Windsor’ Cassel, financial adviser to Edward VII, emigrated from Cologne to Liverpool aged 16, in 1869. Within five years he was earning a substantial salary. By 1888 he owned a residence in Mayfair, renting and then purchasing country houses and sporting estates. He owned an apartment in Paris, built a chalet in the Swiss Alps and rented villas near Biarritz. With the assistance of New York based dealer Joseph Duveen, in the 1890s Cassel collected Meissen porcelain, and from 1902 acquired antique English silver from leading London dealers. In 1904 Cassel purchased Brook House, Park Lane, which he extended and furnished with historic British portraits, French furniture, clocks, jade, porcelain, silver and contemporary paintings. The house and its contents were inherited by his granddaughter Edwina Ashley, who married Lord Mountbatten after Cassel’s death. Brook House was redeveloped, and although the best paintings, porcelain and silver were redisplayed there by the Mountbattens, the remainder of Cassel’s collection was sold at auction in 1932.