CIRCA 1755

MATTHIAS LOCK, THOMAS CHIPPENDALE AND THE FRENCH ROCOCO

These magnificent armchairs are among the grandest examples of seat furniture produced in the 'French' taste of the middle of the eighteenth century. Their sinuous frames entwined by Roman acanthus foliage, reflect the French 'picturesque' style that had been invented by artists, architects and ornemanistes such as Juste-Aurle Meissonier (d.1750) and Gilles-Marie Oppenord (d.1742) and praised by the artist William Hogarth in his Analysis of Beauty, 1753.

Designed in the manner of the French fauteuil la Reine, they epitomise Thomas Chippendale's 'Modern' or French 'picturesque' style illustrated in The Gentleman and Cabinet-maker's Director 1754-1762. The chairs' cartouche backs and seats, designed for French tapestries, were originally upholstered chassis with Gobelins panels woven with figures, fables and landscapes on a crimson ground. Chippendale's related 'French Chair' engravings of 1759 were added to the third edition of the Director, 1762 (pls.XXII and XXIII) which Chippendale dedicated to Prince William Henry, Duke of Gloucester (d.1805), brother of king George III. These chair designs feature tapestries depicting scenes from Aesop's Fables or flowers. Commenting on this form of 'French chair' in his Director of 1754, Chippendale noted that being 'open below the back' they appear 'very light' and this lightness is here enhanced by the open fretwork of the frames, whose scalloped ripples and foliated cartouches bubbled with cabochon 'embossments' fusing the Elements of earth and water.

The chairs' proportions and robust character are remarkably close to a design by Matthias Lock (d.1765) for a pattern chair, which is now known as the Sitter's Chair of the artist Richard Cosway (d.1821) (see H. Hayward, 'A Unique Rococo Chair by Matthias Lock', Apollo, October 1973, pp.268-171; J.Hardy, 'The Discovery of Cosway's Chair, Country Life, 15 March 1973 and J.Fowler and J.Cornforth, English Decoration in the 18th Century, London, 1978, pp.154-155). The chair appears in many of Cosway's portraits executed in the 1760s and 1770s. The design and the chair are both in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. The design is part of an album of undated drawings entitled 'Original Designs by Matts.Lock, Carver 1740-1765' which was purchased by the museum in 1862 from Lock's grandson.

A masterful designer and specialist carver, Lock was the first to publish carvers' ornament in the new French rococo taste in pattern books such as Six Sconces published in 1744, Six Tables (1746) and A Book of Ornaments (1747). Lock earned enormous respect from his colleagues who at the time of his death described him as 'the best Draftsman in that way that had ever been in England'.

Matthias Lock's career as 'Carver' is printed on his trade card dating to around 1752 when he was working at Tottenham Court Road, and according to a diary of that year, he was employed as carver by Lord Northumberland, Lord Holderness, and a Mr. Bradshaw. In 1752, he also published his A New Book of Ornaments in collaboration with H. Copland. After this time, he is thought to have established a relationship with Thomas Chippendale, providing piece-work carving and collaborating in Chippendale's enormously successful pattern book which he first advertised in 1753 as' The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director; Being a New Book of Designs for Household Furniture in the Gothic, Chinese and Modern Taste, as improved by the politest and most able Artists'. Their working relationship is further supported by a design in the Lock album at the Victoria and Albert Museum: the original drawing for a pedestal pattern published in the 1762 edition of the Director, plate CL. Further to this, Fiske Kimball in his 'Creators of the Chippendale Style' (Metropolitan Museum Studies, 1929) maintains that based on a study of the drawings and engravings in the Director Lock was retained by Chippendale 'to make sketches for any other carver's work commissioned for execution on behalf of clients'. It is conceivable that a Matthias Lock/Thomas Chippendale collaboration was responsible for the design and execution of this ambitious suite of seat furniture working in a fully developed French rococo manner from Chippendale's establishment at the sign of the 'French chair' in St. Martin's Lane.

THE HISTORY OF THE SUITE

THE PALACE OF WESTMINSTER AT THE TIME OF GEORGE IV'S CORONATION

The armchairs, forming part of a suite comprising two settees, eight armchairs and two fire-screens, are first documented as furnishing the Royal apartments at the Palace of Westminster, when they were occupied by King George IV for his 1821 coronation, whose splendour befitted the world's most prestigious monarch. The suite's French style would have been appropriate for the King's Drawing Room, which served as a reception room for dignitaries and ambassadors. Indeed the grandeur of the coronation, no doubt intended to eclipse Napoleon's 1804 coronation, was partly funded by payment made following the French defeat at Waterloo.

The suite was probably 'repaired' by the firm of Messrs. Bailey and Saunders of Mount Street, who were employed by George IV during the Regency and were the principal suppliers for the furniture and fittings for the coronation. In preparation for this spectacular event, the existing furnishings in the Palace of Westminster were supplemented by furniture brought in from other Royal residences as well as newly commissioned pieces (see H.Roberts, 'Royal Thrones 1760-1840', Furniture History, 1989, pp.69, 75). The adjoining apartments occupied by the King and Lord Chamberlain the night before the coronation later reverted to the Speaker's residence. On the evidence of the Duke of Devonshire's Handbook (see below), the suite of drawing room furniture was claimed as a perquisite by Charles Manners-Sutton (later 1st Viscount Canterbury in 1835) who served as Speaker of the House of Commons from 1817 until 1834. According to tradition, the Lord Great Chamberlain, Lord Gwydir, claimed the King's Bedroom furniture.

The Speaker's House, located in the old Palace of Westminster, extended from St.Stephen's Court to the House of Commons. The apartments suffered little damage in the fire which consumed the Palace in 1834, although the house was subsequently demolished in the summer of 1842 to make room for the new House of Commons (J. Mordaunt Crook and M.H.Port, The History of the King's Works, vol.IV, 1782-1851, London, 1973, pp.532-534).

CHATSWORTH: THE 6TH DUKE OF DEVONSHIRE

The suite was acquired by William Cavendish, 6th Duke of Devonshire (d.1858) directly from Lady Canterbury. The 6th Duke, who acted as King George IV's representative at the 1825 coronation of his close friend as Tsar Nicholas I, aggrandised the State Apartments of his mansion at Chatsworth in Derbyshire, possibly encouraged by the possibility of an Imperial visit. The Tsar did come to England, but the Royal entourage instead visited the Duke's house at Chiswick, Middlesex.

The Duke in his description of the State Drawing Room in his Handbook to Chatsworth and Hardwick (1844) recorded the purchase of the suite:

The Chairs, couches and screens, of beautiful Beauvais tapestry, were sold to me by Lady Canterbury; and it was more because I could not say 'no' in reply to the earnest honest manner, and the hearty recommendations of the beautiful Irish woman, than that I wanted them. They were her Lord the Speaker's perquisites, and had been repaired on the occasion of George the Fourth's sleeping at Westminster, the night before his Coronation. They form a suitable handsome decoration here... (Deborah, Duchess of Devonshire, The House-Living at Chatsworth, New York, 1982, p.135).

The suite is mentioned in the Chatsworth inventories in 1844 and 1859 where it is recorded in the Fourth State Room. Chairs from the suite appear in a photograph of the State Drawing Room at Chatsworth in the early twentieth century (C.Latham, In English Homes, 1909; reproduced here). At this time, the chairs are shown with their Gobelins tapestry covers. The suite is recorded in the Gold Drawing Room in 1908.

HENRY CLAY FRICK

The suite was sold by the 8th Duke of Devonshire, where the art dealer Lord Duveen is thought to have been involved in its shipment to America. The furniture was then acquired in 1914 by the celebrated collector Henry Clay Frick (d.1919) for this New York mansion/museum on Fifth Avenue. Purchased from E.R.Bacon of New York, Mr. Frick paid an extraordinary amount for the suite, in excess of $250,000. However, as Mr. Frick intended his rooms for public display and wished the upholstery to be shown in a saloon dedicated to the Arts of France, he commissioned the Paris firm of J.G.Maus to execute new chair frames for the tapestries in the Louis XV style. The original chair frames, reupholstered in crimson damask, were intended for display in the main painting gallery, now known as the West Gallery (although there is no record of their having been installed there). The tapestry covers in their new frames were to furnish the principal salon, until Mr. Frick acquired the Fragonard panels that now decorate the room from the estate of J.Pierpont Morgan in 1915 and the remounted Chatsworth suite no longer seemed appropriate. Louis XV chairs by Nicholas Heurtaut were accordingly purchased for the room in 1918, as they were upholstered in panels of Beauvais tapestries after Boucher (T.Dell, The Frick Collection: Furniture and Gilt Bronzes, vol.VI, Princeton, 1992, pp.212-231). There is no record about Frick's sale of the original suite, and they do not appear again until six chairs were auctioned on behalf of the antique dealers Jacquemar, Inc., New York (originally a Parisian firm), by Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, 5 May 1945, lots 177-179.

POSSIBLE ORIGINS OF THE SUITE

While the history of the suite is documented from the early nineteenth century until 1914, their eighteenth century commission and more recent dispersal remains shrouded in mystery.

The 1945 Jacquemar sale catalogue notes that the chairs had been in the collection of Lord Foley of Ruxley Lodge, Surrey. (They are not included in the auction of the principal contents of Ruxley Lodge conducted by Castiglione & Scott, 14-20 October 1919). The same Gerald Henry, Baron Foley of Ruxley Lodge owned the scrap-books containing Chippendale's original Director designs, at the time they were acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1919. It has been suggested that the drawings came into the Foley family's possession when the 1st Baron Foley acquired Holt Castle together with its contents from Lord Montfort in 1777. This opens the possibility that his father, Henry Bromley, 1st Baron Montfort (d.1755) may have commissioned this 'French' suite from the Chippendale workshop. The ownership of these original drawings supports a close relationship with Chippendale. Certainly, Lord Montfort is listed among the Director's original subscribers and it has been put forth that he may even have financed its publication (A.Coleridge, Chippendale Furniture, New York, 1968, p.84). He was for a time a well-respected Whig politician, and connected with elegant society and contemporary correspondence recounts his meeting with Louis XV at Versailles which would have introduced him to the French court fashion (see J.Friedman, Spencer House, London, 1993, p.70). While he is known to have employed pre-eminent architects, William Kent and John Vardy, at Horseheath Hall and his St.James's property (later Spencer House), any improvements at Holt Castle are to date unknown.

Thomas Foley, 3rd Baron Foley of Kidderminster, who purchased Holt Castle after he came into the title in 1776, was himself immensely wealthy. The Foleys were also great patrons of the French arts in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century illustrated by a magnificent Louis XIV marquetry cabinet-on-stand by Pierre Gole that came from their collection at Witley Court and is now in the Getty Museum (A.Sassoon and G.Wilson, Decorative Arts: A Handbook of the Collections of the J.Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, 1986, no.3). Some of the loose drawings from the Chippendale scrap-book surfaced in 1962 in Droitwich, only a few miles from Witley Court, which supports that Lord Foley brought these with him to the family seat (C.Gilbert, The Life and Work of Thomas Chippendale, London, 1978, vol.I, pp.100-101). If the suite was indeed removed to Witley Court, it could have left the house when alterations were being carried out in around 1800.

There is an alternative possibility that this suite, 'repaired' for George IV, had been removed from another Royal property, such as Gloucester Lodge, on the occasion of the coronation. Chippendale is known to have worked for the Duke of Gloucester and as previously mentioned, dedicated the 3rd edition of his Director to his royal patron, the brother of King George III. When the Duke died at Gloucester Lodge in 1805, Thomas Chippendale Junior (d.1822) was still trading in St. Martin's Lane as 'Upholsterer and Cabinet-maker to the Duke of Gloucester', and it had been to Gloucester Lodge that Chippendale Junior took Thomas Mouat in 1775, when he came to London to see the firm's work (C.Gilbert, The Life and Work of Thomas Chippendale, London, 1978, p.235).

Until confirming documents confirm their original commission, the eighteenth century origin of this spectacular suite remains an intriguing mystery.