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Lot Essay
The marriage in 1812 of Catherine Long (d.1825) to the spendthrift nephew of the Duke of Wellington, William Wellesley, resulted in the one of the great financial scandals of the age. She was heiress not only to her father but to the estates of Child and Tylney. These included Colen Campbell's magnificent Palladian house at Wanstead in Essex which was dispersed and demolished in 1822-3 as a direct result of Wellesley's ways. Gradually abandoned by the Earls Cowley after the sale of 1920, the house at Draycot Cerne was was found in surprisingly good condition by John Harris in 1954 after years of being empty. In No Voice from the Hall, London, 1998, p. 106, he writes of 'our sense ... of an earlier house enfolded in more recent dress'. That 'more recent dress' was much of 1784 so the house for which these chairs were supplied must have been enfolded.
This Drawing Room chair pattern, fusing Roman with gothic and French 'picturesque' elements, reflects the George II 'Modern' fashion. Their form relates to 'French Chair' designs in Thomas Chippendale's Director of 1754-1762. The same leg pattern features on a suite of needlework-upholstered chairs that were supplied in the later 1760s for Padworth House, Berkshire (P. Macquoid and R.Edwards, The Dictionary of English Furniture, London, 1933, vol. III, p. 179, fig. 54). The fret leg pattern was used on the rails of seat furniture at Bramshill, Hampshire, which have been attributed to the Berkeley Square cabinet-maker William Linnell (d. 1765) (see the pair of chairs was sold from a Family Collection, Christie's New York, 16 April 1994, lot 156). A pair of armchairs from the set was sold anonymously, Christie's, London, 1 July 2004, lot 117.
This Drawing Room chair pattern, fusing Roman with gothic and French 'picturesque' elements, reflects the George II 'Modern' fashion. Their form relates to 'French Chair' designs in Thomas Chippendale's Director of 1754-1762. The same leg pattern features on a suite of needlework-upholstered chairs that were supplied in the later 1760s for Padworth House, Berkshire (P. Macquoid and R.Edwards, The Dictionary of English Furniture, London, 1933, vol. III, p. 179, fig. 54). The fret leg pattern was used on the rails of seat furniture at Bramshill, Hampshire, which have been attributed to the Berkeley Square cabinet-maker William Linnell (d. 1765) (see the pair of chairs was sold from a Family Collection, Christie's New York, 16 April 1994, lot 156). A pair of armchairs from the set was sold anonymously, Christie's, London, 1 July 2004, lot 117.