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Lot Essay
Displaying curvilinear shaping on multiple planes and vibrantly grained splats, this pair of chairs exemplifies the Philadelphia Queen Anne aesthetic of the mid-eighteenth century. Details of their design and construction relate closely to the practices of the “Wistar armchair” shop as defined and discussed by Alan Miller. These include compass seats with applied rims and trifid feet with raised central and side panels, with the graining on the splat and its more complex shaping illustrating developments of the shop in the 1740s and 1750s (Alan Miller, “Flux in Design and Method in Early Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia Furniture,” American Furniture 2014, Luke Beckerdite, ed. (Milwaukee, 2014), pp. 60-64). Other chairs possibly from the same original set include a chair marked V (Sotheby’s, New York, 26 September 2008, lot 62) and, with variant knee returns, a chair marked II at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (acc. no. 25.115.14).
The chairs were acquired from a Rawle-family descendant whose line included Francis Rawle (1729-1761), a possible first owner for the set represented by the pair in the present lot. He was the son of William Rawle (d. 1741), a lawyer and original member of the Library Company. Francis married Rebecca Warner in 1756, an event that may have occasioned the commission of this set of chairs. This pair of chairs were likely inherited by his son, William Rawle (1759-1836) (fig. 1), a prominent lawyer who was appointed United State Attorney for Pennsylvania by President George Washington. The chairs continued to descend to his son Francis William Rawle (1795-1881) and Francis’ son, James Rawle (1842-1912), President of J.G. Brill Co., at the time, the largest manufacturers of street cars (Frank Marshall Eastman, Courts and Lawyers of Pennsylvania: A History, 1623-1923, vol. 4, pp. 56-58; see also Lita H. Solis-Cohen, “Living with antiques: Castlefinn Farm, the Pennsylvania home of Mrs. James Rawle II,” The Magazine Antiques (March 1971), pp. 386-390).
The chairs were acquired from a Rawle-family descendant whose line included Francis Rawle (1729-1761), a possible first owner for the set represented by the pair in the present lot. He was the son of William Rawle (d. 1741), a lawyer and original member of the Library Company. Francis married Rebecca Warner in 1756, an event that may have occasioned the commission of this set of chairs. This pair of chairs were likely inherited by his son, William Rawle (1759-1836) (fig. 1), a prominent lawyer who was appointed United State Attorney for Pennsylvania by President George Washington. The chairs continued to descend to his son Francis William Rawle (1795-1881) and Francis’ son, James Rawle (1842-1912), President of J.G. Brill Co., at the time, the largest manufacturers of street cars (Frank Marshall Eastman, Courts and Lawyers of Pennsylvania: A History, 1623-1923, vol. 4, pp. 56-58; see also Lita H. Solis-Cohen, “Living with antiques: Castlefinn Farm, the Pennsylvania home of Mrs. James Rawle II,” The Magazine Antiques (March 1971), pp. 386-390).