A PAIR QUEEN ANNE STYLE WALNUT WING ARMCHAIRS

ONE INCORPORATING EARLY 18TH CENTURY ELEMENTS

Details

A PAIR QUEEN ANNE STYLE WALNUT WING ARMCHAIRS
ONE INCORPORATING EARLY 18TH CENTURY ELEMENTS
Each shaped back, scrolled arms and scalloped seat covered in green cut-velvet, on baluster shaped legs on scrolled feet joined by stretchers

Provenance

Joseph E. Widener, Lynnewood Hall, Elkins Park, Pennsylvania.
Gift of Irwin Untermyer, 1964.

Literature

Y. Hackenbroch, English Furniture with some furniture from other countries in the Irwin Untermyer Collection, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1958, pl. 49, fig. 72.
M.C. Kathrens, American Splendor: The Residential Architecture of Horace Trumbauer, New York, 2002, p. 72.

Lot Essay

The chairs once formed part of a larger suite belonging to famed art collector Joseph E. Widener (1872-1943) in the Van Dyke Gallery at Lynnewood Hall, the family's vast Pennsylvania estate designed by Horace Trumbauer. Widener inherited $60 million upon the death of his father, Peter, in 1915, making him one of the richest men in America. He devoted his energies to expanding and refining the family's art collections which were opened to the public, and visited by many members of European royalty. In 1939, he offered the collection to the National Gallery of Art in memory of his father. The Widener gift was announced by President Franklin D. Roosevelt at the Gallery's opening ceremony in 1941 and installed shortly thereafter.

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