.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
WYATT'S DESIGN
The design of these hall benches, each with scrolled Grecian-couch supports, ribbon-guilloche frieze and palmette-centered scrolled pediment to their paneled backs, and a tablet centered by a painted medallion depicting the crest of the Bowes Daly family within a festoon drapery veil, directly derives from hall chairs designed by James Wyatt (1746-1814) for his 'great neoclassical masterpiece', Castle Coole, Co. Fermanagh, Ireland for Armar Lowry-Corry, 1st Earl of Belmore (1740-1802) in the late 18th century (The Knight of Glin and J. Peill, Irish Furniture, London and New Haven, 2007, pp. 185-187). The inventive design embraced fashionable classical forms, while adhering to the great centuries-old tradition of wooden-seated hall furniture.
FROM DUNSANDLE TO RUSSBOROUGH
The Hon. Denis Daly PC (1748-1791) married Lady Henrietta Maxwell (d. 1852), the heiress and only daughter of Robert Maxwell (1723-1800), 1st Earl of Farnham, in 1781 and thus increased his wealth and estates. Shortly after, he built Dunsandle House in County Galway. Details about the house's design and construction are sparse, but it was regarded as one of the finest neoclassical houses in the county. The ceiling in the Drawing Room was described as ‘Adamesque’ while the Entrance Hall contained later plasterwork decoration, which was almost certainly designed by James Wyatt. Daly's father-in-law the 1st Earl of Farnham had commissioned Wyatt to work on his own house, and it was likely he that connected Daly and Wyatt. These hall benches were almost certainly supplied by Wyatt for Dunsandle when the Entrance Hall plasterwork was added.
Dunsandle House descended in the Daly family to Major Denis Bowes Daly MC. The benches, along with the majority of the contents from Dunsandle, were evidently brought to Russborough House, County Wicklow, with the Bowes Daly family when they acquired it and moved there circa 1931. Two chairs from the original set of four are almost certainly those shown in a photograph of the entrance hall at Russborough taken in 1936 (see: S. O'Reilly, Irish Houses and Gardens, London, 1998, p. 88-89). Sir Alfred Beit bought Russborough in 1952 from Major Daly, at which time the hall benches were removed.