ATTRIBUTED TO WILLIAM AND JOHN LINNELL, CIRCA 1755

This serpentined and mirror-framed 'landscape' overmantel is designed in the George II picturesque/Chinese manner popularized by Thomas Chippendale in his The Gentleman and Cabinet-maker's Director of 1754-62. It is typical of the work executed at this time by Messrs. William and John Linnell of Berkeley Square, one of the first firms to adopt the Chinoiserie style. The firm is celebrated for the suite of furniture supplied to the 4th Duke of Beaufort (d.1756) for the Chinese Bedroom at Badminton House, Gloucestershire which included a related pagoda-capped overmantel incorporating a seated Chinese 'pagode' figure and platforms to display imported Chinese porcelain (illustrated in P.Macquoid, The Age of Satinwood, London, 1908, fig.8). While this mirror is unusual in its use of a Chinese reverse-painted glass (the large oval frame probably originally contained a similar painting), other featured design elements appear in William Linnell's drawings of pier-glasses preserved among the firm's archives at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. See H.Hayward and P.Kirkham, William and John Linnell, London, 1980, vol.II, pp.82 and 94, figs.159 and 181 for designs that feature the same large-scale rustic figures supporting pagoda-swept parasols; another pattern (ibid, p.95, fig.183) shows a bell-hung pagoda cresting.

A pair of pier mirrors of similar inspiration attributed to the Linnell firm and with closely related parasol-bearing figures was sold in these Rooms, 12 April 1996, lot 180.