Lot Essay
The very French design of these chairs is characteristic of the most advanced fashion of the 1790s and, as such, the reputed royal provenance seems entirely plausible. The various elements of the design appear in a simplified, and far less French manner, in Thomas Sheraton's designs of the early 1790s. A very similar suite of seat furniture was supplied for Sir John Soane's ultra-fashionable Yellow Drawing Room at Wimpole Hall, Cambridgeshire (see: C.Hussey, 'Wimpole Hall, II', Country Life, 7 December 1967, p. 1496, fig. 7)