EARLY 19TH CENTURY

William Goodsir was the 3rd husband of Mary Goodsir (1900-1976) who was born Cornelia Vanderbilt only child of George and Edith Vanderbilt (née Stuyvesant). Cornelia Vanderbilt was raised in the highest echelons of American society and much of her youth was spent at the vast North Carolina mansion Biltmore, built in the 1890s by George Vanderbilt and still the largest private house in America. She married firstly John Amherst Cecil, however by the 1940s she escaped American society for English shores and in 1949 married Captain Vivian Bulkeley-Johnson and lived at The Mount, Oxfordshire where she and her husband assembled a remarkable collection, a portion of which was sold at Christie's in 1973. Her third husband William Goodsir, was the father of the present owner.

The Mount Trust Collection is perhaps best known for its exceptional group of mainly Italian Renaissance masterpieces, as well as sporting British pictures, which were the subject of an article written by Denys Sutton in Connoisseur, October 1960, pp. 103-107. Formed under the guidance of Captain and Mrs. Vivian Bulkeley-Johnson for The Mount, Churchill, Oxfordshire, this private collection, assembled in the mid- 20th century, embraced several fields including exceptional Oriental works of art and English furniture, a small part of which was sold at Christie's, London, 22 November 1973.

A pair of related 'comb' back chairs was sold anonymously, Sotheby's, New York, 16-17 April 1993, lot 362.