.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
This magnificent library bergere is conceived as an imperial throne in the antique style promoted by the Society of Dilettanti and by architects such as Charles Heathcote Tatham (d. 1842), author of Etchings of ... Grecian and Roman Architectural Ornament, 1806. Its design was clearly inspired by a Grecian marble theatre seat with its 'poetic' chimerae in the form of the griffin or lion-bodied eagle that was sacred to the sun and poetry deity, Apollo. One such example forms part of the Arundel Marbles in the collections of the Ashmoleum Museum, Oxford. Its execution in oak would also have been appropriate for the fashionable oak-panelled library of the early 19th century. Such eagle-griffin featured on Rome's Temple of Antinuous and Faustina, and served as supports for an antique marble altar-tripod and a table, now in the Capitoline Museum and the Vatican Museum respectively. The latter may have helped inspire the design of related griffin tripods and tables commissioned around 1811 for Carlton House by George, Prince Regent, later George IV. The tables were later restored for Windsor Castle in 1828 (Carlton House, Past Glories of George IV's Palace, 1991, nos. 50 and 37).
The chair reputedly came from Courtown House, Co. Kildare, which was rebuilt for John Aylmer in circa 1815. Although it never appears to have been at Courtown during the Aylmer family's tenure (sold by the family in 1949), it is possible that it was made by one of the leading Dublin firms of cabinet-makers such as Mack, Williams and Gibton (established in 1812). A sideboard by Mack, Williams and Gibton with similarly massive supports formed as mythical lions was sold from the collection of Ingrao, Sotheby's, New York, 20 October 2006, lot 68. It also brings to mind an impressive Regency pollard oak bookcase in the Egyptian taste designed with oversized figural supports and winged sphinxes and labelled by the Irish firm of Scott and Pasley, Dublin, was sold in these Rooms, 11 June 2010, lot 13 ($140,500).
The chair reputedly came from Courtown House, Co. Kildare, which was rebuilt for John Aylmer in circa 1815. Although it never appears to have been at Courtown during the Aylmer family's tenure (sold by the family in 1949), it is possible that it was made by one of the leading Dublin firms of cabinet-makers such as Mack, Williams and Gibton (established in 1812). A sideboard by Mack, Williams and Gibton with similarly massive supports formed as mythical lions was sold from the collection of Ingrao, Sotheby's, New York, 20 October 2006, lot 68. It also brings to mind an impressive Regency pollard oak bookcase in the Egyptian taste designed with oversized figural supports and winged sphinxes and labelled by the Irish firm of Scott and Pasley, Dublin, was sold in these Rooms, 11 June 2010, lot 13 ($140,500).