PROBABLY CIRCA 1755, THE BACK RESHAPED

Executed in the highly fashionable French manner of the 1750s and 1760s, this settee closely relates to a 'French Stool', reproduced here, that was included as plate LXI in Ince and Mayhew's 1762 Universal System of Household Furniture. Both the design source and the settee share similar scrolling carved arms, a heavily rocaille-carved serpentine apron, and three cabochon-headed cabriole legs with scrolled feet. Another closely comparable settee from the collection of D.L. Isaacs, Esq., shares many common features with the present settee with two notable differences - the Isaacs settee had an arched padded back and rests on four front legs instead of three (see P. Macquoid, A History of English Furniture: The Age of Mahogany, New York, 1906, fig. 195).