This year, for the first time, Castle Howard in Yorkshire joined the party of stately homes in bringing contemporary art to the house and grounds, by asking one of the foremost Post-War British sculptors, Tony Cragg. Working with curators Jon Wood and Greville Worthington, but mainly one suspects with his own singular vision, Cragg created what was both a survey show, and a conversation with both the interior of the house, and the grounds which feature some of the most famous vistas in the British Isles.

It was a formidable backdrop for any artist to take on, but Cragg pulled it off. The show of 18 sculptures – ranging from 1997 to hot from the studio – was received with great acclaim: a collaboration between artist and landscape in which both art and nature took on an added dimension. By its very nature, an exhibition is ephemeral – in the case of Tony Cragg at Castle Howard, the grass has already grown back – but what we do have is a book commissioned to provide a visual record, not just to document Cragg’s work, but also how, where and why it was sited. An essay by Jon Wood, gives a compelling insight into why Cragg was a natural fit for this project – in every sense of the phrase, while Christopher Ridgway provides an elegant counter-balance with reflections on the permanent collection of sculpture at Castle Howard and how it is, as he puts it, ‘so closely intertwined’ with the architecture.

As Nicholas Howard writes in the foreword, a show of contemporary art at Castle Howard was ‘long overdue’. After all, from the eighteenth century onwards, the grounds of this grandest of all the stately homes of England had so many statues, buildings, monuments, it was a forerunner of the modern-day sculpture park.

This has not phased Cragg. Born the other side of the Pennines in Liverpool in 1949, he has lived and worked in Germany since 1977. Perhaps this distance has given Cragg a sense of coming across Castle Howard with fresh eyes.

Initially it seems as if the boldest move was to place Cragg’s sculptures in the house, particularly the three primary-coloured works in the Great Hall, beautifully illustrated in the book and shown sitting surrounded by classical busts. Nicholas Howard who has lived here since a child, points out that Castle Howard is renowned for its collection of classical antiquities and bringing a new presence into the house jolted connections with what is there – something emphasised by the photographs of the works in situ, some of which were taken by Howard himself. Designed by Vanburgh and Hawksmoor, this has always been the most theatrical of the Great Houses, and placed under the showstopping rotunda, Cragg’s giant Early Form bronzes – McCormack (2007); Outspan (2008) and Red Square (2015) are shown to shape-shift from vessels into swags that enter into the spirit of the room and carry on the performance. For the entrance hall, Cragg placed four pieces, Bent of Mind and Woman’s Head, among them, that allude to portraits, and which chimed a face-off with the antique heads and classical busts that line the corridors. Of course, this being Cragg, we can see the image then slips its form and morphs like a moving cloud into a geological outcrop.

For the Octagon, which bridges the two arms of the long gallery, Cragg chose two works – made from layered wood – which injected a dynamism into the room. Red Figure (2023) seemed to lunge forward like a demented melting candle at its counterpart, Pair, (2015) which is in itself an extraordinary piece that teeters like a ballerina en pointe. As Cragg points out in the catalogue, the piece would not be stable ‘if the layering was horizontal’. It resembles its classical forebear, the contrapposto Greek statues that defy gravity. As Cragg states ‘I am interested in an imbalance of form struggling to maintain an equilibrium.’

When it comes to the grounds, Cragg took the same bold approach in siting the works. He did not skirt around the edges or shy away from the pole positions, indeed the polar opposite. The view of the façade was animated  with works such as Industrial Nature (2024) which – rare for Cragg – has a textured surface with patches sanded through the vivid red. It looked a cross between an explosion and a flower erupting into full bloom.

Two works made even more of an impact. With these, Cragg not only staged an intervention into the history and fabric of Castle Howard, but provided a solution. The Temple of the Four Winds is a pavilion set at the end of a raised path, acting as a destination first for the eye, and then for the legs. When you reach it, you find it is an empty space. Cragg commandeered the interior for his tour-de-force Eroded Landscape from 1999, comprising hundreds of glass bottles stacked improbably on top of each other in layers and standing on glass sheets. Vessels have always been a fundamental concern of Cragg’s. The earliest artworks made by humans acted as containers so there is something primal in the differing shapes that act as a magnet for him. The work could read as a section of a rock, or a forgotten cupboard of jam jars, but that would be overlooking an unexpected ethereal beauty which brought the temple alive.

The second intervention was possibly even more dramatic: Cragg spotted an empty plinth in the centre of a reservoir – visible from house and park – and couldn’t resist making his mark. Over the Earth (2015) is, like all of Cragg’s works, a hybrid – in this case between a mushroom cloud, a winged victory and something indefinable. When the light hit the sculpture, it radiated a golden gleam while the reflection of the form dissipated in the water, creating another, more fluid, shape-shifting piece. Castle Howard should make it a permanent fixture. But if that isn’t on the cards, at least we have the catalogue as a permanent reminder of an exhibition that has brought out the best in both the sculptor and the setting.

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