CIRCA 1750

These chairs correspond to a design for a hall chair by Matthias Darly (d. 1780), who humorously styled himself 'Professor of Ornament to the Academy of Great Britain’ (C. Gilbert, ‘The Early Furniture Designs of Matthias Darly’, Furniture History, 1975, p. 37 and plate 69). In 1750-51, Darly published a design for a chair with a related naturalistic back; this design was subsequently reissued in 1766 as a ‘Hall Chair’ by ‘Robert Manwaring Cabinet-Maker and Others’ in The Chair-Maker's Guide, plate 39 (ibid.).
In 1753 Darly was commissioned by Chippendale to engrave ninety-eight of the one hundred and forty-seven plates for the first edition of The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director (1754), and Chippendale probably adapted Darly's chair pattern to become a garden seat in the third edition of his Director (1762) as plate XXIV. Both designs derive from the Italian Renaissance sgabello chair. Although such hall chairs are often associated with painted grotto chairs because they share a related organic design that, as in this instance, incorporates the scallop-shell pattern, the iconography of Venus’s birth, these hall chairs were never intended to be used outdoors. Hall chairs were usually part of a large set of eight or more intended for the entrance hall and with their coats-of-arms they were as much about dynastic display as for practical use. Chippendale’s description of such chairs states: ‘They may be made either of Mahogany, of any other Wood, and painted, and have commonly wooden Seats. If the Carving of the Chairs in Plate XVIII was thought superfluous, the Outlines may be preserved, and they will look very well… Arms, if required, may be put to those Chairs’.

The present chairs can be compared to other recorded examples of the same profile and with similar scallop shell ornamentation including:
A pair of identical hall chairs, probably from the same set but with a as yet unidentified coat-of-arms, from the collection of the Earls of Guilford.
A pair of chairs supplied to Francis Basset, Esq. (d. 1769) for Tehidy Park, Cornwall (sold Christie’s, New York, 18 October 2005, lot 450, $248,800 including premium; and again ‘Simon Sainsbury: The Creation of an English Arcadia’, Christie’s, London, 18 June 2008, lot 75, £91,250 inc' prem').
A set of four hall chairs with painted arms of Nassau de Zuylestein, Earl of Rochford (most recently Phillips, 11 February 1992, lot 74).
A set of twelve hall chairs formerly at Tythrop, Oxon (Art Treasures Exhibition, Bath 1958, no. 156, with Christy's of Kent, Ltd.).
A set of eight hall chairs supplied to St Giles's House, Dorset (illustrated in A. Coleridge, Chippendale Furniture, London, 1968, fig. 366).
Two pairs of hall chairs from the Rovensky collection (Sotheby’s, New York, 5-6 April 2006, lots 419 and 420, $66,000 and £72,000
inc' prem' respectively).

These chairs have an illustrious provenance having formerly been in the 19th century collection of the Brymer family, and later acquired by the Hollywood actor, Douglas Fairbanks Junior for Westridge, his Pacific Palisades beach house in Santa Monica, USA.

ALEXANDER BRYMER

The painted cypher in the centre of the chair-back depicts the arms of Alexander Brymer (d. 1822). Brymer, born in Dundee in circa 1745, had an interesting career in North America; from circa 1771-72, he was the agent, first in Boston, then in Halifax, Nova Scotia, for the London merchants Robert Grant and William Brymer, the latter probably a relation, who held the navy victualling contract for the British force. In 1781, at the recommendation of Lord North, he was appointed to the Council of Nova Scotia but continued his merchant activities to become fabulously wealthy. In 1800 Byrmer's uncle died and Brymer, the sole beneficiary of an estate that included the living of Charlton Mackrell in Somerset, retired and returned to England. Initially he resided in London and later in Bath; he held 100 year leases on seven houses in Bedford Square, London. It is likely that he acquired the present hall chairs after his return to England, at which time he had his own coat-of-arms painted on the roundel in the chair-backs, perhaps replacing another. In 1851, John Brymer, Alexander’s son, purchased Ilsington House, Dorset, a 17th century mansion that had been in the Walpole family from the first quarter of the 18th century, and possibly these chairs graced this mansion.